1 

REESE  LIBRARY 

OF  THE 

UNIVERSITY  OF  CALIFORNIA. 


u 

Class 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 
A  STUDY  IN   NATIONAL  PSYCHOLOGY 


THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

A  STUDY  IN  NATIONAL 
PSYCHOLOGY 


BY 


A.   MAURICE  LOW 

\\ 

CHEVALIER  DE  L'ORDRE  DE  LEOPOLD 

IMPERIAL  ORDER  OF  THE  RISING  SUN 

AUTHOR  OF  "PROTECTION  IN  THE  UNITED  STATES" 

"AMERICA  AT  HOME,"  ETC. 


BOSTON   AND  NEW  YORK 
HOUGHTON  MIFFLIN  COMPANY 

ftitertffte  press  Cambridge 
1909 


COPYRIGHT,    IQOQ,    BY   A.    MAURICE   LOW 
ALL    RIGHTS   RESERVED 

Published  October  IQOQ 


V 


f 


MY  DEAR  LAWRENCE, 

This  book  will  recall  to  you  how  we  thrashed  out  and  argued 
many  a  puzzling  question  and  endeavored  without  prejudice 
to  find  the  truth,  which  was  not  always  easy,  for  an  American 
and  an  Englishman  do  not  see  eye  to  eye  in  all  things ;  but  our 
purpose  was  ever  the  same :  to  ascertain  the  causes  that  have 
produced  results.  To  me  this  book  voices  your  always  sym 
pathetic  but  judicious  criticism  and  your  generous  help  —  a 
companionship  as  precious  as  it  is  rare. 

A.  MAURICE  Low. 
Washington,  May,  1909. 


CONTENTS 

I.  INTRODUCTORY 3 

II.  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE  A  NEW  RACE        ....    19 

III.  THE  INFLUENCE  OF  ENVIRONMENT  ON  RACE       .    .    42 

IV.  CLIMATIC  AMALGAMATION  OF  RACE 54 

V.  THE  OLD  IN  THE  NEW  ENVIRONMENT        ....    72 

VI.  NEW  ENGLAND  THE  CRADLE  OF  RACE 84 

VII.  THE  PURITAN       97 

VIII.  PURITANISM  GIVES  BIRTH  TO  DEMOCRACY   .    .    .    .111 

IX.  PURITANISM  BECOMES  A  POLITICAL  FORCE        .     .     .  125 

X.  THE  AMERICAN  HAS  ALWAYS  BEEN  A  REBEL       .     .132 

XI.  THE  BIBLE  THE  PURITAN  CONSTITUTION    .    .    .    .146 

XII.  THE  PURITAN  HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH    .     .     .  184 

XIII.  THE    FOUNDATION     ON    WHICH     THE    AMERICAN 

CHARACTER  RESTS 212 

XIV.  TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY 215 

XV.  VIRGINIA  AN  ARISTOCRATIC  OLIGARCHY       .    .    .    .241 

XVI.  THE  FIRST  CATHOLIC  COLONY  .  275 


viii  CONTENTS 

XVII.    RICE  PRODUCES  NEW  SOCIAL  CONDITIONS       .     .     .  305 

XVIII.    AN  EXPERIMENT  THAT  FAILED        326 

XIX.    THE  FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION        337 

XX.    RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  is  BORN 354 

XXI.    How  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT 377 

BIBLIOGRAPHY 411 

INDEX  .  423 


THE  PLANTING  OF  A  NATION 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 


CHAPTER   I 

INTRODUCTORY 

NEARLY  nine  years  ago,  after  living  for  more  than 
twenty  years  in  the  United  States  and  studying 
its  political  and  social  institutions,  I  asked  myself 
whether  the  American  people  were  a  new  race 
with  distinct  racial  characteristics  and  a  developed 
psychology  of  their  own  or  were  simply  the  modi 
fication  of  a  parent  stock  retaining  the  characteris 
tics  of  their  begetting.  It  was  a  question  that  has 
been  widely  discussed,  but  without  an  ^jtempt,  so 
far  as  I  am  aware,  to  reach  a  conclusion  based  on 
scientific  deductions. 

I  began  the  inquiry  for  my  own  satisfaction  and 
without  any  preconceived  idea  of  putting  my  con 
clusions  in  permanent  form,  and  it  is,  I  think,  due 
both  to  writer  and  to  reader  that  I  should  say  the 
investigation  was  made  without  prejudice  or  bias; 
I  had  no  theory  to  sustain  by  alleged  facts;  it  was 
immaterial  where  the  adventure  ended,  whether  it 
led  to  the  discovery  of  a  new  race  or  the  rediscovery 
of  an  old  race  amidst  new  surroundings  unmodified 
by  its  new  conditions,  or  only  so  slightly  modified 
that  the  species  had  remained  uninfluenced  by 


4  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

environment  and  other  circumstances.  With  an 
open  mind,  in  the  spirit  of  the  investigator  and  not 
of  the  advocate,  I  began  the  study. 

It  seemed  to  offer  no  great  difficulties,  at  least 
none  that  might  not  yield  to  reasonable  intelligence 
and  fair  industry,  but  I  was  little  to  realize  then 
how  far  I  should  wander,  and  how  often  I  must 
retrace  my  steps  and  begin  anew,  before  my  quest 
was  satisfied.  There  was  a  literature  rich  and 
voluminous  and  varied;  a  literature  that  showed 
much  painstaking  research  and  high  ability,  com 
bined,  in  many  instances,  with  a  graceful  and 
attractive  style.  In  the  writing  of  history  treating 
of  their  country  the  Americans  rank  with  any 
other  modern  nation;  during  the  last  quarter  of 
a  century  America  has  been  exploited  by  the 
literary  entrepreneur,  native  as  well  as  foreign,  and 
the  output  has  been  thrown  on  the  market  in  pro 
digious  quantities;  for  the  American  loves  to  read 
about  himself  and  is  eager  to  see  himself  from  the 
point  of  view  of  the  foreigner,  although  he  does  not 
always  agree  with  him ;  and  the  foreigner  has  found 
in  America  the  romance  of  life  that  has  long 
departed  from  Europe.  America  and  the  Ameri 
cans  were  an  undiscovered  country  and  an  unknown 
people,  and  each  literary  Columbus  returned  to  feed 
the  imagination  with  a  newer  and  more  untrust 
worthy  tale. 

Now  all  this,  while  interesting,  was  unsatisfactory, 
and  brought  me  no  nearer  to  my  objective.  History 


INTRODUCTORY  5 

written  by  men  with  a  claim  to  be  regarded  as 
serious  historians  subordinated  everything  to  the 
historical  narrative.  To  understand  a  people,  to 
have  a  sympathetic  comprehension  of  the  spirit  that 
is  in  them,  to  know  what  has  made  them  what  they 
are  and  what  the  future  may  have  in  store  for  them, 
to  be  able  to  grasp  not  alone  their  material  develop 
ment  but  the  much  more  vital  and  elusive  working 
of  their  mind,  it  is  necessary  as  a  foundation  that 
one  shall  have  a  thorough  knowledge  of  the  history 
of  that  people;  but  history,  using  the  word  in  its 
strictly  technical  sense,  is  too  narrow  and  too  con 
centrated.  It  remains  for  the  historical  psycholo 
gist  to  treat  in  his  own  way  and  as  a  special  branch 
the  subject  in  its  widest  relations.  And  the  work 
of  the  literary  entrepreneur  was  too  superficial,  too 
untrustworthy,  too  hasty,  to  be  of  value,  although 
it  served  one  useful  purpose.  It  was  an  impression 
ist  and  brilliantly  colored  picture  of  the  exaggera 
tions  of  national  character  and  usually  a  caricature ; 
and  caricature  is  not  always  malicious,  for  the 
supreme  art  of  caricature  is  the  perfect  likeness 
with  the  accentuation  of  a  salient  feature. 

If  the  impressions  and  observations  and  reflec 
tions  of  Englishmen  and  Frenchmen  and  Germans, 
of  women  as  well  as  men,  after  a  few  weeks,  and 
sometimes  only  a  few  days,  spent  in  a  country  the 
size  of  all  Europe,  with  a  population  more  than 
twice  that  of  their  own  country  and  with  political 
and  social  institutions  foreign  to  them  and  needing 


6  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

long  and  careful  study  to  be  understood,  had  any 
value,  it  was  this:  the  foreigner  found  nothing  the 
same  as  that  to  which  he  was  accustomed,  and 
he  criticised  or  approved  according  to  tempera 
ment  or  preconceived  prejudice.  The  mind  receives 
its  most  sensitive  impression  from  things  new,  not 
from  a  reproduction  of  the  old.  The  fact  that 
every  foreigner  found  in  America  something  new 
—  a  new  view  of  life,  new  social  institutions,  new 
methods  of  government  —  confirms  perhaps  more 
than  anything  else  the  conclusion  reached  by  the 
writer  through  other  sources  of  investigation,  that 
America  has  given  birth  to  a  new  race;  that  the 
term  America  to-day  is  something  more  than  a  mere 
geographical  expression;  that  there  has  come  into 
being  an  American  Nation,  for  a  nation  is  the 
product  of  not  one  but  many  things,  and  there 
must  be  certain  well-defined  elements  to  constitute 
nationality. 

What  those  are  shall  be  explained  in  their  proper 
place.  It  is  sufficient  now  to  set  down  as  an  asser 
tion  capable  of  scientific  demonstration  a  fact  of 
the  first  importance. 

My  sole  purpose  being  the  ascertainment  of  this 
truth,  it  is  only  necessary  briefly  to  explain  the 
method  pursued.  In  writing  biography,  in  seeking 
for  the  causes  that  made  this  man  great  and  another 
notorious,  one  does  not  begin  when  the  character  of 
his  subject  has  been  formed.  If  the  true  man  is 
to  be  revealed,  if  we  are  to  know  him  as  he  was, 


INTRODUCTORY  7 

and  especially  if  we  are  to  know  the  influences  that 
moulded  him  and  so  profoundly  affected  him  for 
good  or  evil,  we  must  begin  at  the  beginning  and 
follow  his  life  through  his  struggles,  his  temptations, 
his  triumphs.  In  a  word,  I  have  attempted  to 
write  the  biography  of  a  people;  and  the  more  I 
considered  how  that  best  could  be  done  the  stronger 
became  the  conviction  that  I  must  begin  with  the 
incunabula  of  the  race.  In  the  history  of  early 
struggles  is  found  the  cradle. 

Every  other  civilization  of  which  we  have  any 
knowledge  is  so  much  older  than  that  of  America 
that  we  can  take  much  for  granted ;  manners,  morals, 
customs  have  become  stereotyped  and  we  do  not 
have  to  ask  the  reasons  for  them  or  how  they  came 
into  existence;  we  accept  them  as  matter  of  course, 
precisely  as  we  take  the  other  phenomena  of  life; 
so  much  are  we  accustomed  to  them  that  they 
no  longer  excite  wonder.  But  with  America  it  is 
different.  The  why  and  the  wherefore  is  the  con 
stant  question;  the  meaning  of  it  all  can  only  be 
understood  by  an  intimate  knowledge  of  the  funda 
mental.  Thus  it  becomes  possible  for  an  English 
man  to  write  a  book  on  France  and  a  Frenchman 
on  England,1  and  neither  finds  it  necessary  to  go 
back  to  history  in  his  search  for  the  foundation  on 
which  national  character  is  laid. 

It  is  impossible  to  write  a  history,  using  that 
word  not  merely  to  describe  the  deeds  of  a  nation, 

1  Bodley:  France;  Boutmy:  The  English  People. 


8  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

but  also  its  development  and  the  formation  of 
character,  its  physical  and  mental  growth,  and 
to  bring  into  true  relation  all  the  various  causes  that 
make  life,  unless  it  is  written  as  a  consecutive  whole. 
The  proper  function  of  the  historian,  the  psycho 
logist  of  history  especially,  as  I  conceive  it,  is  from 
the  summit  of  the  present  to  look  back  with  clear 
vision  on  the  past,  and  with  the  advantage  of 
unobscured  view,  free  from  the  distraction  of  being 
an  actor  in  the  scene  of  life,  behold  the  causes  that 
produced  results,  observe  the  play  of  dsedalian 
forces  which  once  released  gain  from  within  them 
selves  new  impulses  and  form  fresh  centres  of 
energy,  and  with  the  past  and  the  present  as  a 
guide  develop  the  future.  The  undulating  wave  of 
human  action  sets  in  motion  agencies  the  conse 
quences  of  which  man  can  no  more  foresee  at  the 
time  than  he  can  follow  each  drop  as  it  is  hurled 
up  from  the  depths  and  is  dissipated  in  ether,  not 
to  be  lost  but  to  exert  new  power.  Every  human 
action  forecasts  futurity  as  inevitably  as  life  fore 
casts  death.  History  is  acted  in  the  present,  but  it 
is  written  in  the  past  and  read  in  the  future. 

I  make  no  pretensions  to  original  historical  re 
search.  I  have  gone  to  the  best  and  most  accepted 
authorities  for  my  information,  carefully  balancing 
conflicting  statements  and  endeavoring  to  reconcile 
them  by  the  preponderance  of  evidence.  In  the 
historical  section  everything  has  been  purposely 
omitted  that  was  not  essential  to  a  complete  and,  I 


INTRODUCTORY  9 

hope,  lucid  explanation  of  the  origin  and  develop 
ment  of  the  American  people.  Such  things  as  en 
cumber  the  pages  of  historians,  which  it  is  the  duty 
of  the  historian  to  relate, — quarrels  between  parties, 
petty  conflicts,  even  conflicts  on  a  grander  scale,  — 
have  been  either  omitted  or  dismissed  with  merely 
a  reference;  but  those  things  that  determine  char 
acter,  that  distinguish  the  offspring  of  a  race,  that 
develop  the  mind,  that  prepare  the  ground  for 
the  acceptance  of  ideas  which  are  to  be  so  fruitful 
in  results,  have  been  treated  at  proper  length.  To 
students  of  American  history  it  may  seem  as  if  I 
had  simply  repeated  what  is  already  well  known; 
but  to  this  criticism,  if  it  shall  be  made,  my  answer 
is  that  it  appeared  to  me  to  be  essential  to  present 
certain  historical  facts  in  their  just  relation  to 
psychological  progress  so  as  to  show  that  the  Ameri 
can  people  have  not  sprung  from  the  air.  but  are, 
similar  to  all  other  highly  developed  races,  the 
product  of  evolution;  in  their  case  political  and 
sociological. 

It  may  perhaps  be  thought  that  disproportionate 
space  has  been  given  to  the  Puritan,  but  the  more 
I  have  come  to  study  the  causes  that  produced  this 
new  race,  the  more  I  have  been  impressed  with  the 
imperfect  knowledge  possessed  by  Americans  — 
and  if  it  is  so  among  Americans  in  how  much 
greater  degree  must  it  be  among  Europeans  ?  —  of 
the  great  and  lasting  influence  exercised  on  Ameri 
can  civilization  and  the  formation  of  character  by 


10  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  Puritans,  who  affected  not  only  America  but 
have  influenced  all  the  rest  of  the  world. 

Tradition  has  invested  the  Puritan  with  certain 
qualities.  There  lingers  in  the  mind  of  every 
American,  the  dim  recollection  of  school-days,  the 
picture  of  the  Puritan,  grim,  forbidding,  sombre; 
and  so  difficult  is  it  to  efface  the  impressions  of 
youth  that  Puritanism  has  become  synonymous 
with  all  that  is  harsh  and  gloomy  and  opposed 
to  innocent  pleasure;  and  to  be  Puritanical  im 
plies  rigidity  of  conscience  and  is  construed  as 
reproach.  To  the  average  American,  almost  to 
every  American  who  is  not  a  historical  student, 
Puritan  and  Pilgrim  are  interchangeable  terms; 
and  so  little  is  the  distinction  regarded  that  in  a 
carefully  prepared  address  made  by  a  distinguished 
public  man,  himself  a  writer  of  American  history, 
delivered  at  the  dedication  of  a  monument  to  the 
Pilgrims,  he  referred  to  the  Puritans  as  if  they  and 
the  Pilgrims  were  one;  as  if  they  shared  the  same 
views  of  religion  and  life;  as  if  to  the  Pilgrims 
belonged  the  honor  of  having  made  New  England. 

"Acting  at  the  sources  of  life,  instruments  other 
wise  wreak  became  mighty  for  good  or  evil,  and 
men,  lost  elsewhere  in  the  crowd,  stand  forth  as 
agents  of  Destiny." 1  In  all  history  there  is  no 
thing  so  extraordinary  as  the  effect  of  that  religious 
persecution  which  led  to  the  establishment  of 
Massachusetts  and  laid  the  foundation  of  the  great 

1  Parkman:  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World,  Introduction,  p.  xv. 


INTRODUCTORY  11 

American  Republic.  Puritanism  left  its  impress 
upon  the  life  and  thought  of  England,  and  having 
done  its  work  as  the  agent  of  Destiny  became 
merged  in  other  forces.  Puritanism  in  America, 
when  it  ceased  to  be  merely  a  religious  symbol,  was 
still  a  social  force,  and  it  is  to-day.  :<  Vitalized  by 
the  principles  of  its  foundation,  the  Puritan  com 
monwealth  grew  apace."  She  sowed  the  seeds  of 
intolerance  and  brought  forth  liberty.  She  preached 
blind  obedience  to  authority  and  was  the  first  to 
resist  when  it  became  galling.  She  taught  thrift 
and  elevated  the  material  to  the  dignity  of  a  virtue. 
She  made  acquisition  a  duty.  She  was  free,  and 
she  was  shackled  to  a  narrow  and  harsh  theology 
that  dwarfed  expansion.  And  yet  she  expanded, 
sending  forth  her  sons  into  the  barren  places,  who, 
full  of  energy  and  the  love  of  gain  that  was  as  much 
a  part  of  the  Puritan  character  as  his  faith  in  the 
immutable  workings  of  a  higher  power,  gave  new 
lustre  to  his  name  and  made  the  world  marvel. 
Where  France  failed,  England  succeeded.  What 
Spain  attempted,  England  accomplished.  Holland 
planted  and  England  reaped.  Sweden  dreamed 
and  England  worked. 

In  those  long  years  of  struggle  and  adversity,  in 
those  years  when  England  was  master  of  a  contin 
ent  and  compelled  the  recognition  of  her  power 
and  Englishmen  were  competing  with  each  other 
in  the  rivalry  of  trade  and  in  widening  their  own 
possessions,  those  men  of  the  North,  inspired  by  a 


12  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

great  purpose,  were  building  a  civilization  differ 
ent  from  Englishmen  in  the  South,  and  as  the 
agents  of  Destiny  were  unconsciously  preparing 
for  the  part  they  were  fated  to  play.  Would  the 
American  Colonies  have  severed  the  tie  that  bound 
them  to  England  if  Massachusetts  had  been  settled 
by  the  men  who  made  Virginia  and  Maryland  ? 
There  is,  of  course,  no  answer,  but  we  can  well  be 
lieve  that  if  there  had  been  no  Puritan  element  in 
America,  if  all  that  we  understand  by  Puritanism 
had  not  vitalized  the  American,  the  breach  might 
have  come -- possibly  it  was  Destiny,  and  was 
inevitable  —  but  it  would  have  been  closed  in 
another  way.  But  this,  however,  we  do  know, 
that  while  the  men  of  the  South  were  no  less  quick 
to  respond  to  the  clarion  call  that  sounded  the  note 
of  freedom,  it  was  the  spirit  of  the  Puritan  that 
pervaded  the  land;  it  was  Puritanism  that  made 
resistance  a  duty;  it  was  the  influence  of  Puritan 
ism,  then  as  now,  that  has  given  the  American 
character  its  stability,  and  has  ever  been  an  ele 
ment  to  counterpoise  the  sometimes  menacing 
mutability  of  the  infusion  of  foreign  blood;  it  was 
the  Puritan  love  of  gain  and  expansion  that  could 
be  appeased  only  by  new  colonies  planted  in  the 
wilderness;  it  was  the  Puritan  sense  of  thrift  and 
order  and  commerce  that  made  the  American 
people  a  nation  devoted  to  business  and  more  by 
the  right  of  birth  a  nation  of  shopkeepers  —  using 
that  historical  expression  in  no  sense  derogatory 


INTRODUCTORY  13 

but  as  characterizing  the  strongest  quality  of  the 
American  mind,  its  commercial  instinct  —  than 
any  other  people  in  the  world.  There  would, 
I  am  confident,  have  been  an  America  if  the 
Puritans  had  never  been  driven  out  of  Eng 
land  and  found  shelter  when  and  how  they  did, 
but  it  would  not  have  been  the  America  we  now 
know. 

Such  comments  as  I  make  from  time  to  time  in 
sketching  historical  progress  are  to  impress  on  the 
reader  that  almost  against  their  will  Englishmen 
were  driven  on  the  road  that  led  to  Americanism; 
that  they  became  Americans  without  conscious  ef 
fort,  and  ceased  to  be  Englishmen,  which  was  for 
eign  to  their  inclination;  and  certainly  with  no 
conception  of  the  tremendous  results  that  were  to 
follow.  Actions  in  themselves  trifling,  but  which 
produced  momentous  psychological  consequences, 
have  too  often  escaped  notice.  The  historian  feels 
that  he  has  more  important  matters  to  record,  but 
they  are  essential  in  tracing  the  growth  of  the  mind 
of  a  people  and  observing  how  they  were  influenced 
by  causes  remote  from  the  climax. 

What  follows  is  original  in  that  the  results  of 
observation  and  study  develop  their  own  conclu 
sions.  It  is  an  effort  to  search  the  spring  to  its 
source.  It  is  the  subjection  of  phenomena  to  min 
ute  analysis,  and  although  at  times  there  is  seem 
ingly  no  connection  between  the  consequence  and 
its  primal  cause,  in  the  continuity  of  thought  there 


14  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

is  no  break;  the  present  foreshadows  the  future  by 
the  reflection  of  the  past. 

Avowing  myself  to  be  a  uniformitarian,  repudiat 
ing  the  doctrine  of  the  catastrophic  process  of  human 
development,  believing  that  mental  growth  and  so 
cial  expansion  are  wrought  by  slow  and  gradual 
change,  which  is  always  working  to  a  higher  plane, 
the  psychology  of  the  American  people  presents  no 
miracle  and  is  reducible  to  exact  terms.  We  have 
here  no  unfathomable  mystery.  There  are  no  wide 
gaps  to  be  filled  by  speculative  soaring.  It  is  a  com 
plex  but  at  the  same  time  compelling  study  of  widen 
ing  spiritual  and  mental  powers,  logical  in  all  its 
processes;  inevitable  in  its  results. 

Can  the  history  of  a  people  best  be  written  by  one 
of  themselves  or  by  a  foreigner?  It  is  a  question 
which  every  one  will  answer  for  himself.  My  own 
opinion  is  that  a  foreigner  who  approaches  his  task 
with  sympathy,  who  comes  not  as  a  critic  but  as  a 
judicious  investigator,  who  is  neither  a  partisan  nor 
a  eulogist,  who  erects  no  false  standard  of  compari 
son,  and  who  is  not  afflicted  with  that  distressing  form 
of  intellectual  cecity  which  measures  everything  by 
the  narrow  vision  of  its  own  national  perfection,  is 
better  qualified  for  the  work.  For  it  is  axiomatic  that 
we  do  not  see  ourselves  as  others  see  us,  and  what 
is  true  of  the  individual  is  even  in  a  larger  sense 
true  of  a  people.  They  see  themselves  as  a  man 
looks  at  his  mirror,  who  having  seen  his  reflection 
every  day  for  forty  years  is  still  a  stranger  to  his  own 

A 


INTRODUCTORY  15 

face;  while  the  foreigner,  if  he  is  not  blinded  by 
patriotic  conceit,  has  the  definite  advantage  of  com 
parison,  which  is  the  starting-point  of  investigation, 
which  leads  the  inquiring  mind  to  ask  whether  that 
which  is  new  and  strange  may  not  be  better  than 
that  which  is  old  and  familiar,  and  makes  it  neces 
sary  to  try  to  ascertain  what  has  brought  about  the 
change  and  the  result  it  has  produced.  The  for 
eigner  has  the  advantage  of  detachment  and  is 
uninfluenced  by  prejudices  which  are  accounted 
national  virtues;  he  is  frequently  more  discriminat 
ing  but  not  less  just  than  the  native.  And  yet  so 
profoundly  am  I  impressed  with  the  truism  that 
almost  no  one  understands  any  one  else,  and  very 
seldom  even  himself,  and  so  difficult  is  it  to  appre 
ciate  the  motives  and  actions  of  our  fellow  beings, 
that  one's  feeling  of  confidence  is  shaken  when  he 
attempts  the  almost  stupendous  task  of  interpret 
ing  national  psychology.  Realizing  this,  I  am  very 
well  aware  that  the  point  of  view  of  the  alien  can 
never  be  that  of  the  native,  and  that  some  of  the 
conclusions  reached  in  the  following  pages  will  be 
challenged.  If  so,  they  may  be  attributed  to  the  im 
possibility  of  that  mysterious  barrier  that  nationality 
raises  ever  being  quite  leveled.1  It  may  be  over- 

1  This  may  appear  to  conflict  with  the  views  expressed  in  later  pages  on 
the  absorption  of  the  foreigner,  the  immigrant,  into  the  American,  but  it  does 
not.  There  is  a  difference  between  the  immigrant,  who  comes  to  America 
with  the  definite  purpose  to  become  an  American  and  who  divests  himself  of 
his  nationality  as  he  does  his  strange  clothes  the  more  quickly  to  adjust 
himself  to  his  new  life,  and  the  foreigner,  who  while  he  may  make  his  home 
in  America,  and  perhaps  contributes  a  little  to  its  development  and  progress, 


16  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

thrown  by  long  years  of  residence,  by  constant  and 
intimate  association,  by  marriage  and  new  family 
ties ;  but  here  and  there  a  little  of  that  barrier  will  be 
left,  like  an  old  walled  city  whose  defenses  have  long 
crumbled,  but  where  a  tower  still  stands  to  remind 
the  visitor  that  there  were  walls  to  be  beaten  down 
before  the  stranger  could  enter  the  gates. 

Unless  a  writer  is  content  merely  to  wander  aim 
lessly  in  the  beaten  track  and  is  satisfied  so  success 
fully  to  conceal  his  convictions  that  by  pleasing 
everybody  he  satisfies  nobody,  he  is  forced  at  times 
to  disagree  with  the  conclusions  reached  by  other 
authors  and  to  view  actions  from  his  own  experience. 
The  rule  imposed  upon  himself  by  Bodley l  has  been 
observed  by  me  —  never  to  make  a  harsh  criticism 
unless  my  own  impression  was  corroborated  by 
the  published  opinion  of  a  respected  and  impartial 
American  authority.  A  regard  for  the  feelings  of 
others  should  make  a  foreigner  sparing  in  his  judg 
ment.  I  do  not  concede  that  all  disapprobation 
must  necessarily  be  avoided,  or  that  a  useful  pur 
pose  is  served  by  profuse  and  indiscriminate  praise, 
which  is  a  sure  and  ready  means  of  gaining  an 
ephemeral  popularity;  neither  is  captious  fault 
finding  to  be  indulged  in  simply  to  magnify  one 
people  or  civilization  at  the  expense  of  another ;  but 

still  retains  his  nationality  and  is  always  conscious  that  he  is,  say  an  English 
man  instead  of  an  English-American ;  and  who  while  making  no  claim  to 
being  an  American  has  not  been  influenced  by  Americanism.  It  is  the  for 
eigner,  sharply  to  distinguish  him  from  the  American  of  foreign  stock,  to 
whom  my  remarks  on  the  foreign  point  of  view  apply. 
1  Bodley:  France,  vol.  i,  p.  50. 


INTRODUCTORY  17 

a  judicious  discussion  of  national  characteristics  is 
not  only  valuable  but  essential  if  the  evidence  is 
sufficient  to  lead  to  a  positive  conclusion.  No  for 
eigner  has  more  harshly  criticised  the  Americans 
than  the  Americans  have  so  often  criticised  them 
selves;  much  of  which,  I  believe,  is  unwarranted. 
It  is  the  idealism  of  the  Americans  that  makes  them 
such  searching  self-critics.  Buried  deep  in  the  nature 
of  every  child  of  this  race  is  an  intense  spiritual 
aspiration,  overlaid,  it  is  true,  by  the  material,  but 
against  which  the  spiritual  ever  struggles.  It  is  this 
idealism,  this  longing  to  triumph  over  the  material, 
that  is  perpetually  voiced  in  self-reproach,  that 
breaks  out  in  revolt  against  the  sordidness  of  politics 
and  the  commercialism  of  life ;  it  is  this  which  makes 
the  American  criticise  himself  at  times  so  fiercely, 
that  makes  him  so  quick  to  resent  the  criticism  that 
comes  from  without;  and  that  the  American  is 
extremely  sensitive  to  foreign  criticism  cannot  be 
denied.  But  this  is  not  the  place  to  elaborate  the 
theme ;  later  it  will  be  discussed  in  its  wider  relation 
to  the  American  character. 

If  I  repeat  that  this  work  is  the  result  of  nine  years' 
conscientious  study  and  preparation,  it  is  not  to  ask 
the  indulgence  of  the  reader  for  any  deficiencies 
which  the  text  may  reveal, —  and  that  it  falls  short 
of  what  such  a  book  ought  to  be  no  one  more  keenly 
appreciates  than  myself, —  but  it  is  my  protest 
against  what  I  may,  I  hope  with  moderation, 
call  the  impertinence  of  the  literary  journalist,  who 


18  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

approaches  a  serious  task  lightly,  and  without  re 
gard  for  his  responsibilities  turns  out  the  stock  book 
on  America;  who,  after  a  week  in  New  York  or 
Boston  and  a  couple  of  days  in  Washington  and  a 
day  in  Chicago,  poses  as  an  authority  and  considers 
himself  qualified  to  instruct  his  own  people  on  a 
subject  of  which  he  is  totally  ignorant,  and  fre 
quently  unsuited  by  temperament  and  training. 
Would  it  be  making  undignified  a  serious  subject  to 
suggest  that  in  this  day  of  frequent  international 
conference  and  congresses  it  should  be  regarded  as 
a  violation  of  international  comity  for  a  person  to 
write  a  book  on  a  foreign  country,  its  people  or  its 
customs,  who  has  not  given  proof  of  the  proper 
qualifications  for  the  task? 


CHAPTER  II 

THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE   A   NEW   RACE 

I  PURPOSE  to  write  of  the  origin,  growth,  and  de 
velopment  of  the  American  people  and  to  trace  the 
causes  that  have  produced  a  new  race.  From  the 
feeble  seed  thrown  by  destiny  on  a  rock-bound  shore 
there  has  sprung  a  mighty  race  and  a  civilization 
the  marvel  of  the  world;  a  new  system  of  political 
philosophy  that  made  man  conscious  of  the  dignity 
of  his  birthright.  The  causes  that  have  produced 
the  American  race  and  American  civilization  lie 
buried  in  no  obscurity.  No  lava  of  a  culture  long 
dead  must  be  cleared  away  before  the  truth  stands 
revealed.  On  the  palimpsest  of  a  virgin  continent, 
on  verdure-clad  mountains,  in  primeval  forests,  on 
the  trackless  waste  of  inland  oceans,  and  rivers  so 
vast  that  they  gave  to  man  a  new  conception  of  the 
might  of  nature,  the  American  people  have  written 
in  enduring  language  the  record  of  a  race. 

Just  as  the  story  of  the  struggle  and  intellectual 
progress  and  spiritual  development  of  a  man  is  of 
vastly  more  interest  than  the  record  of  his  posses 
sions  and  material  success,  so  the  history  of  the 
mental  growth  of  a  people  is  tenfold  more  vital  and 
enthralling  than  the  chronicle  of  their  wars  and  con 
quests.  With  wars,  with  battles,  with  the  rise  and  fall 


20  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  political  parties  this  history  will  not  concern  itself 
except  as  the  aspirations  and  passions  of  men, 
now  facing  death  in  defense  of  an  ideal,  then  en 
gaged  in  a  peaceful  but  equally  determined  struggle 
to  preserve  that  ideal,  so  moulded  character  that 
they  produced  a  new  type  and  gave  to  the  world  a 
new  race. 

For  although  the  American  people  spring  from 
an  old  stock  and  have  been  influenced  by  many 
races  and  the  civilization  of  all  races,  climate,  envi 
ronment,  social  conditions,  and  a  system  of  political 
philosophy  far-reaching  in  its  moral  influence  have 
produced  not  a  mongrel  race  but  mentally  and 
physically  a  new  race.  "In  a  society  living,  grow 
ing,  changing,  every  new  factor  becomes  a  perman 
ent  force;  modifying  more  or  less  the  direction  of 
movement  determined  by  the  aggregate  of  forces."1 
In  both  the  animal  and  the  vegetable  kingdoms 
species,  by  the  irresistible  law  of  evolution  and  their 
adjustment  to  new  conditions,  retain  many  of  the 
characteristics  of  the  parent  stock,  but  by  conform 
ing  to  their  environment  in  the  struggle  for  existence 
create  a  new  type.  This  has  been  accomplished  in 
the  American  people  after  little  more  than  a  century 
of  national  existence.  They  are  not  English,  al 
though  they  speak  and  think  in  English.  They  are 
not  German,  or  Irish,  or  French,  although  the  Ger 
mans,  the  Irish,  the  French,  and  many  other  races 
have  influenced  them.  Saxon,  Teuton,  Celt,  Latin 

1  Spencer:  The  Study  of  Sociology,  p.  95. 


A  NEW  RACE  21 

have  been  the  elements  fused  in  the  alembic  of  a 
social,  political,  and  moral  code  which  have  pro 
duced  a  new  metal  with  many  of  the  attributes  of  its 
constituent  elements  but  with  properties  of  its  own. 

In  history  there  are  no  haphazard  events,  al 
though  at  times  there  is  no  juxtaposition  of  cause 
and  effect,  and  the  real  meaning  can  be  interpreted 
only  when  it  is  projected  on  the  background  of 
age.  Superficial  thinking  and  inaccurate  investi 
gation  ascribe  a  divine  or  miraculous  interposition 
to  events  that  are  the  result  of  purely  human  action, 
which  is  as  convenient  for  the  historian  and  saves 
him  as  much  trouble  in  his  search  for  first  causes 
as  it  was  for  the  persecutors  of  witches  to  obtain  a 
conviction  on  "spectral  evidence." 

In  the  study  of  race  growth,  which  is  the  study 
of  the  ever  advancing  tide  of  civilization,  although 
there  are  times  when  the  tide  appears  to  ebb,  two 
facts  obtrude  themselves  so  insistently  that  their 
significance  cannot  be  mistaken.  One  is  that  his 
tory  —  using  that  term  in  its  broadest  sense  as 
embracing  all  human  activity  and  its  progress  and 
development  —  is  written  on  a  palimpsest ;  the 
other  is  that  mankind  does  not  learn  from  the  teach 
ings  of  the  past,  but  knowledge  comes  only  from 
experience.  In  this  the  race  differs  not  at  all  from 
the  individual,  who  is  taught  the  great  lesson  of 
life  not  from  the  wisdom  of  the  ancients,  which  is 
common  to  all,  but  by  that  knowledge  which  is 
peculiar  to  himself. 


22  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

If  it  were  otherwise,  if  the  discipline  of  the  long 
line  of  the  past  counted  for  anything,  the  wheel  of 
life  would  revolve  more  slowly  but  on  a  truer  centre. 
With  monotonous,  exasperating  regularity  the  fol 
lies,  the  errors,  the  crimes  of  former  generations  are 
repeated  by  the  present.  If  the  guide  of  the  past 
were  effectual  the  world  after  a  thousand  years 
would  not  allow  its  emotions  to  run  riot;  it  would 
know  that  every  emotion  exacts  its  price,  "for  life 
goes  on  from  generation  to  generation  without  heed 
ing  the  wisdom  of  the  wise  or  the  goodness  of  the 
good.  Her  force  breaks  out  afresh  in  every  child 
that  is  born." 

Fundamentally  human  nature  does  not  change. 
It  advances  with  the  ever  advancing  perfection  of 
mechanical  progress  (it  is  an  interesting  speculation 
whether  civilization  is  the  result  of  mechanical  im 
provement  or  mechanical  improvement  produces 
civilization),  its  morals  and  manners  adjust  them 
selves  to  a  conventional  standard,  and  however 
inadequate  they  may  appear  viewed  from  the  present 
were  all  sufficient  for  their  age,  and,  it  is  important 
to  remember,  were  a  stage  in  the  higher  develop 
ment  of  civilization.  All  the  great  developments  of 
the  internal  man,  Guizot  says,  have  turned  to  the 
profit  of  society;  all  the  great  developments  of  the 
social  stage  to  the  profit  of  the  individual  man.1 
But  while  society  has  changed  extrinsically,  in  all 
that  is  organic  it  is  the  same.  Truth,  honesty,  jus- 

1  Guizot:  History  of  Civilization,  vol.  i,  p.  14. 


A  NEW  RACE  23 

tice  are  the  cardinal  virtues  of  an  age  that  prides 
itself  on  having  attained  the  summit  of  civilization, 
but  they  are  the  virtues  that  have  been  handed 
down  from  the  past  and  are  not  the  creation 
of  the  present.  Wherein  does  the  moral  train 
ing  of  our  children  differ  from  that  of  the  Per 
sians,  or  how  have  we  improved  upon  their  theory 
or  practice?  "The  moral  nature  of  the  child  w^as 
trained  with  assiduous  attention.  As  far  as  pos 
sible,  it  was  preserved  from  contact  with  vice, 
while  the  virtues  of  self-control,  truthfulness,  and 
justice  were  constantly  enjoined  and  practiced. 
Ingratitude  and  lying  were  considered  the  most 
shameful  vices,  while  truthfulness  was  looked  on  as 
the  highest  virtue."1  The  wheel  of  civilization  for 
ever  revolves,  but  its  mass  is  so  immense  and  it 
turns  with  such  deliberation  that  man  the  pigmy, 
with  narrowed  vision,  in  the  conceit  of  pride  in 
what  he  believes  to  be  discoveries,  sees  only  what  is 
before  his  eyes  and  thinks  he  has  beheld  a  new 
truth,  and  all  that  he  has  seen  is  the  civilization  of 
the  past  in  its  periodic  return  coming  to  the  surface 
to  confound  the  present. 

)  Nor  is  it  only  in  morals  that  the  present  repeats 
J  the  past.  The  diversions  of  the  idle  rich  in  all  ages 
)show  a  singular  similitude.  The  unrestrained  li 
cense  of  undergraduates  celebrating  their  triumphs 
on  the  river  or  the  football  field  is  merely  the  sur 
vival  of  the  days  of  the  Restoration,  when  it  was 

1  Painter:  A  History  of  Education,  p.  22. 


24  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  fashion  for  dissolute  young  men  to  band  to 
gether  to  molest  respectable  people  in  the  streets. 
Yet  the  worthy  burgesses  of  London  who  were  the 
victims  of  the  curious  sense  of  humor  entertained 
by  the  Mohocks  simply  experienced  the  fate  of  the 
citizens  of  Rome  at  the  height  of  her  glory,  when 
elegant  aristocrats  found  their  sport  in  rudely 
assaulting  quiet  citizens  returning  from  dinner,  or 
plundering  some  poor  huckster's  stall  in  the  Sub- 
urra,  or  insulting  a  lady  in  her  chair.1  In  little 
things  "often  regarded  as  peculiar  to  America,"  an 
American  writer  satirically  remarks,  "we  are  only 
preserving  old  English  forms  and  customs.  For 
example,  when  a  vigilance  committee  in  the  South 
or  West  decorate  an  obnoxious  stranger  with  a  coat 
of  tar  and  feathers,  they  are  only  exercising  a  form 
of  English  hospitality  practiced  in  the  seventeenth 
century."  2  The  wheel  forever  revolves. 

If  I  emphasize  that  in  the  progress  of  society 
nothing  is  new  and  at  every  stage  its  virtues  and 
vices  are  simply  a  reproduction  of  society  at  a 
former  period,  it  is  because  the  lesson  is  peculiarly 
applicable  to  the  United  States.  Many  Europeans 
who  have  written  of  the  United  States  with  the 
spirit  of  the  philosopher  or  the  historian,  without 
deliberate  intent,  but  in  good  faith,  adopt  this  men 
tal  attitude:  We  have  given  you  literature,  science, 
art,  the  refinements  of  life;  you  have  given  us, 

1  Dill:  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  p.  76. 

3  Campbell :  The  Puritan  in  Holland,  England,  and  America,  vol.  i,  p.  72. 


A  NEW  RACE  25 

what  ?  Nothing  except  the  materialism  of  life  and 
the  corruption  of  politics.  Now  the  reason  for  this 
is  not,  as  Americans  have  so  frequently  believed, 
"a  certain  condescension  in  foreigners,"  that  con 
descension  that  makes  the  foreigner  regard  him 
self  and  his  culture,  his  morals  and  his  habits,  as 
superior  to  the  American.  It  is  purely  psychologi 
cal.  In  viewing  his  own  development  the  European 
cannot  stand  outside  himself;  the  genesis  of  his 
civilization  is  too  remote  for  him  to  be  able  to  com 
prehend  that  it  has  experienced  the  same  "  cyclical 
evolution"  as  a  much  younger  civilization. 

No  living  European  has  seen  the  society  with 
which  he  is  most  familiar  and  of  which  he  is  a 
part,  that  is,  of  his  own  country,  come  into  exist 
ence  with  the  resistless  and  at  times  destructive 
force  of  a  volcano  that  levels  mountains  and  fills 
valleys.  In  the  memory  of  living  man  in  Europe 
human  advancement  has  been  the  slow,  steady, 
almost  unperceived  progress  of  a  river  that  scours 
its  own  bed  and  with  calm  but  irresistible  force,  so 
placid  despite  its  power  that  at  times  the  drift  of 
the  current  is  unnoticed,  bears  its  detritus  to  the 
ocean.  But  in  America  the  movement  has  been 
cataclysmic.  It  has  cut  a  new  channel,  violently, 
with  a  sudden  wrench,  at  times  with  great  disorder, 
when  a  new  channel  was  necessary.  Like  its  own 
Mississippi  it  has  made  mock  of  tradition  and 
scoffed  sociological  geographers,  with  their  precise 
charts  and  their  mathematical  lines  of  boundaries. 


26  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

In  America  man  stands  face  to  face  with  a  civiliza 
tion  in  the  making,  and  the  making  of  civilization 
has  always  been  the  play  of  primordial  forces.  He 
sees  all  that  is  noble  and  all  that  is  base  revealed 
in  all  its  nobility  and  all  its  baseness.  He  sees  the 
mind  stripped  of  its  covering.  Civilization  that  is 
old,  that  has  become  fashioned  into  a  mould  and 
is  a  stereotyped  convention,  conceals  its  workings. 
Much  that  is  shameful  and  sordid  exists,  but  as 
civilized  men  cover  their  bodies,  so  civilized  society 
has  a  horror  of  frankly  revealing  its  mental  pro 
cesses.  In  America  that  stage  has  not  yet  been 
reached.  What  is  bad  is  candidly  pronounced  bad, 
so  that  a  remedy  may  be  found.  What  is  good  all 
the  world  shall  be  told ;  it  shall  be  to  the  world  an 
inspiration,  and  to  Americans  an  encouragement 
for  redoubled  effort.  In  England,  says  Master- 
man,  reticence  still  forbids  an  eager  sincerity  about 
ultimate  questions,  but  in  America  "a  new  child 
race  will  discuss  its  own  spiritual  anatomy  with  all 
the  candor  of  interested  children."  1 

It  is  because  the  Americans  came  from  England, 
it  is  because  the  mother  tongue  of  America  is  Eng 
lish,  and  it  is  from  England  that  America  has 
derived  her  ideals,  her  law,  and  her  literature,  that 
England  has  been  made  the  yardstick  of  compari 
son.  The  two  countries  have  so  much  in  common 
mentally  and  spiritually  that  Europe,  which  knows 
England  so  much  better  than  it  knows  the  United 

1  Masterman :  In  Peril  of  Change,  p.  60. 


A  NEW   RACE  27 

States,  has  fallen  into  the  fashion  of  using  England 
as  the  common  denominator  in  which  to  express 
the  terms  of  American  civilization.  But  this  is  a 
mistake  and  leads  to  an  error  so  grave  that  it 
makes  all  calculation  worthless.  America  is  no 
longer  England  or  even  a  reflex  of  England. 
America  is  American,  and  if  the  character  of  the 
American  people  is  to  be  understood  and  their 
civilization  is  to  be  correctly  interpreted  they  must 
be  measured  by  their  own  standards  and  not 
weighed  in  the  scales  of  foreign  make.  And  bear 
ing  this  in  mind,  we  shall  see  again  with  what  exact 
fidelity  the  present  reproduces  the  past.  The  cor 
ruption  of  politics, — perhaps  the  most  fruitful  theme 
of  European  writers,  and  not  entirely  neglected 
by  American  commentators,  —  the  sordidness  of 
place-hunters,  the  dishonesty  of  demagogues,  the 
lust  for  wealth,  the  vulgarity  of  display,  —  these 
things  are  neither  new  nor  peculiar  to  America. 
For  everything  that  has  happened  or  is  now  hap 
pening  in  the  United  States  we  shall  find  its 
parallel  and  its  precedent  in  English  civilization 
in  its  various  evolutionary  stages;  nor  shall  we 
find  them  at  a  time  so  remote  from  the  present 
that  they  were  merely  the  survival  of  the  manners 
and  customs  of  a  people  then  but  slowly  emerging 
from  barbarism  and  whose  civilization  was  still 
rudimentary.  Long  after  England  had  given  to 
the  world  some  of  the  world's  greatest  and  most 
enduring  literature;  long  after  Newton  had  dis- 


28  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

covered  his  great  principle,  and  Flamsteed  had 
created  the  science  of  modern  astronomy,  and 
Hooke  and  Boyle  and  Wilkins  (the  list  might  be 
prolonged  almost  indefinitely)  had  made  their 
great  contributions  to  science;  long  after  the 
courage  and  valor  and  patriotism  of  England  had 
become  the  glorious  heritage  of  Englishmen,  the 
morals  of  England  were  so  unspeakably  vile  that 
the  titles  of  some  of  the  poems  of  Lord  Rochester, 
a  fashionable  poet,  "are  such  as  no  pen  of  our  day 
could  copy  " ; 1!  and  politics  were  so  openly  a  matter 
of  barter  and  sale  that  seats  in  Parliament  were 
sold  to  the  highest  bidder.  "I  came  into  Parlia 
ment  for  Newton  in  the  Isle  of  Wight,  a  borough 
of  Sir  Leonard  Holmes,"  wrote  Lord  Palmerston 
in  his  diary,  May,  1807.  "One  condition  required 
was  that  I  would  never,  even  for  the  election,  set 
foot  in  the  place,  so  jealous  was  the  patron  lest  any 
attempt  be  made  to  get  a  new  interest  in  the 
borough."  Samuel  Wilberforce,  the  great  philan 
thropist,  paid  <£9000  for  Hull,  which  he  represented 
when  he  first  entered  Parliament;  the  Earl  of 
Shaftesbury,  the  friend  of  the  working  classes  and 
the  champion  of  protective  labor  legislation,  as 
Lord  Ashley,  contested  the  County  of  Dorset  at  a 
time  so  near  the  present  as  1831,  and  spent  <£15,600 
only  to  meet  defeat. 

Parliamentary   seats   are  no  longer   put   up   at 
auction,  but  the  lock  to  Saint  Stephens  turns  with  a 

1  Green:  A  Short  History  of  the  English  People,  p.  589. 


A  NEW  RACE  29 

golden  key.  The  cost  of  getting  a  seat  in  England 
is  often  heavy.  A  considerable  proportion  of  the 
English  members  of  Parliament,  a  modern  English 
writer  says,  would  be  satisfied  if  their  annual  out 
lay  upon  their  divisions  came  to  no  more  than 
£500.  Many  spend  less,  some  a  great  deal  more. 
There  are  large  county  divisions,  and  certain  small 
and  greedy  urban  communities,  debauched  by  a 
succession  of  over-affluent  members,  in  which  the 
annual  expenditure  could  be  reckoned  in  thousands 
of  pounds  rather  than  hundreds.  And  this  is  ex 
clusive  of  the  actual  cost  of  the  election,  which  may 
be  anything  from  £600  to  £2000,  and  may  have  to 
be  defrayed  at  any  moment  determined  by  the 
Fates  and  the  Prime  Minister.  A  man  in  straitened 
circumstances  cannot  meet  all  these  demands  with 
the  open-handed  liberality  the  electors  appreciate. 
Against  the  average  member  of  Parliament,  es 
pecially  if  he  be  a  Conservative,  there  can  hardly 
be  a  more  injurious  imputation  than  that  he 
"does  nothing"  for  the  place  —  that  he  spends  no 
money  there.  And  unless  he  is  a  politician  of  real 
distinction,  or  of  exceptional  personal  popularity, 
he  is  in  some  danger  of  finding  that  his  local  asso 
ciation  is  angling  industriously  for  a  more  muni 
ficent  patron.1 

"  In  these  days  of  so-called  debased  politics,"  an 
American  writer  says,  the  Duke  of  Newcastle  of 
George  the  Third's  time,  "  would  be  denounced  as 

1  Low:  The  Governance  qf  England,  p.  181. 


30  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

a  'machine  boss'  of  the  most  pronounced  type;  for 
it  was  he  who  controlled  the  patronage  barrel;  who 
received  church  dignitaries  in  quest  of  preferment; 
influenced  Whigs  in  search  of  profitable  contracts; 
and  any  individual  that  had  rendered  partisan  serv 
ice  of  any  character  and  believed  he  should  obtain 
a  valuable  concession  of  any  kind.  It  was  the  Duke 
who  patted  this  follower  on  the  back,  who  gave 
money  now  and  a  promise  then,  who  shook  hands 
with  the  public  generally  and  who  tried  to  send  away 
happy  every  person  who  called  upon  him  for  a  favor. 
His  methods  were  no  better  or  no  worse  than  polit 
ical  methods  that  have  been  practiced  in  our  own 
day.  To  gain  a  point  he  never  hesitated  at  bribery."1 
Or  we  may  go  back  to  the  century  before  George 
III  reigned  and  see  where  the  lesson  of  corruption 
was  learned.  When  Randolph  was  sent  to  London 
in  1682  he  wrote  to  the  Bishop  of  London  of  "  their 
great  friend  the  L.  P.  S.  [Lord  Privy  Seal]  who  can 
not  withstand  their  weighty  arguments" ;  and  it  was 
the  weight  of  gold.  Anglesey  was  the  Lord  Privy 
Seal,  and  he  is  described  by  Burnet  as  one  who 
"stuck  at  nothing  and  was  ashamed  of  nothing; 
neither  loved  nor  trusted  by  any  man  or  any  side; 
seemed  to  have  no  regard  to  common  decencies,  but 
sold  everything  that  was  in  his  power,  and  sold  him 
self  so  often  that  at  last  the  price  fell  so  low  that  he 
grew  useless."  2 

1  Hastings:  Introduction  to  Public  Papers  of  George  Clinton,  vol.  i,  p.  24. 
3  Doyle:  English  Colonies  in  America,  vol.  iii,  p.  208. 


A  NEW  RACE  31 

If  England  in  the  eighteenth  century  could  have 
been  compared  say  with  Germany,  Germany  with 
two  hundred  years  more  of  civilization  behind  her, 
with  the  same  liberal  political  institutions  and  the 
same  language  as  England,  what  would  Germany 
have  thought  of  English  political  corruption,  of 
English  manners,  of  the  brutality  of  justice  ?  Eng 
land  to-day  is  no  longer  the  England  of  the  eight 
eenth  and  the  beginning  of  the  nineteenth  centuries, 
because  she  has  experienced  and  learned.  So  will 
the  United  States.  The  political  corruption  in  Eng 
land,  as  I  have  already  shown,  was  greater,  more 
shameless,  more  destructive  of  popular  liberties  than 
it  has  ever  been  in  the  United  States.  In  England 
men  and  women  were  hanged  where  the  money 
value  of  the  article  stolen  was  trifling  because  the 
hanging  of  a  thief  was  supposed  to  be  for  the  protec 
tion  of  society.  In  the  United  States  men  —  women 
seldom,  if  ever  —  are  lynched  because  society,  rude, 
violent,  primitive,  with  stern  ideas  of  justice,  de 
mands  death  for  self-protection.  Can  any  one  doubt 
that  the  time  will  come  when  lynching  in  the  United 
States  will  be  as  unknown  as  is  to-day  the  spectacle 
of  an  English  judge  sentencing  a  woman  to  death 
for  having  stolen  a  few  yards  of  cloth  to  save  herself 
and  her  children  from  starvation  ? 

Society  is  always  striving  for  higher  ethical 
standards  and  before  attaining  them  it  passes 
through  the  same  stages  of  development  that  the 
body  does  physically.  It  must  grow  slowly,  it  must 


32  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

experience  the  pains  of  growth;  life  comes  to  it  as 
a  practical  experience  and  not  as  the  theoretical 
teachings  of  the  past.  The  child  learns  only  by 
experience.  Society  at  every  stage  has  been  like  the 
child  dimly  groping  for  something  better,  ignoring 
precept  and  counsel,  often  hurt  before  it  reaches  a 
higher  development;  but  society  like  the  child,  if  it 
survives,  if  in  it  is  implanted  the  vital  essence,  rises 
to  a  higher  standard  as  a  result  of  its  experiences, 
its  stumblings,  its  pains,  and  its  sorrows. 

In  their  analysis  of  the  American  mind  and  their 
explanation  of  the  psychology  of  the  American 
people  most  writers  have  based  their  conclusion  on 
a  false  premise.  It  has  come  to  be  the  fashion  to 
believe  that  the  chain  of  English  civilization  was 
unbroken  in  its  transmission  to  the  American  colo 
nies;  that  in  the  century  and  a  quarter  of  national 
existence  the  United  States  should  have  developed 
along  the  same  lines,  and  at  the  same  pace,  and  sub 
ject  to  the  same  influences  as  the  mother  land.  The 
intellectual  phases  of  American  history,  therefore, 
are  to  be  judged  as  exalted,  arrested,  or  retrograded 
according  as  they  measure  up  with  contemporane 
ous  conditions  in  England. 

It  cannot  be  too  strongly  asserted  that  nothing  is 
more  misleading  than  this  belief  in  the  transmission 
intact  and  the  continuance  of  the  established  civil 
ization  of  England  among  pioneer  colonizers  in  a 
new  country  and  with  severed  political  allegiance. 
Its  constant  iteration  has  invested  it  with  the  sane- 


A  NEW   RACE  33 

tity  that  age  gives  to  a  "natural  law,"  and  having 
been  accepted  by  the  world  at  large  it  has  become 
a  conviction.  But  even  "natural  laws"  buttressed 
by  the  ignorance  of  centuries  have  been  proved  to 
be  a  perversion  of  the  principles  of  truth  when  the 
test  of  knowledge  has  been  scientifically  applied. 
Copernicus  destroyed  the  "natural  law"  of  the 
universe  and  gave  to  man  the  truth  of  astronomy. 

The  English  who  came  as  the  first  settlers  to 
America  were  in  all  things  Englishmen  in  a  foreign 
environment,  at  heart  alien,  just  as  the  Englishman 
of  to-day  who  serves  his  country  in  India  or  South 
America  or  Germany  remains  an  Englishman,  al 
though  he  adopts  the  language  of  the  country  in 
which  he  lives  and  adjusts  himself  to  its  customs. 
But  with  the  permanency  of  settlement,  the  revo 
lutionizing  influences  of  the  struggle  with  natural 
conditions,  and  above  all  with  a  declared  political 
independence  of  the  British  Crown,  the  bond  with 
the  old  civilization  snapped.  Thus  a  new  and  dis 
tinct  racial  psychology  began  in  America.  After  a 
race  has  been  formed  and  bred  to  certain  qualities 
within  a  limited  field,  Shaler  says,  after  it  has  come 
to  possess  a  certain  body  of  characteristics  which 
give  it  its  peculiar  stamp,  the  importance  of  the 
original  cradle  passes  away.1 

The  civilization  of  England  flowed  on.  Society 
was  established,  its  traditions  were  fixed,  there  was 
no  interruption  in  its  orderly  and  progressive  devel- 

1  Shaler:  Nature  and  Man  in  America,  p.  165. 


34  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

opment.  Civilization  in  America,  when  America 
was  no  longer  English  but  was  American  in  fact  as 
well  as  in  name,  paused  long  enough  to  give  birth 
to  a  new  civilization,  the  like  of  which  the  world 
before  had  never  dreamed  of.  A  new  system  of 
political  philosophy,  which  was  a  moral  code  no 
less  than  a  political,  that  gave  man  "kingship  in 
right  of  his  mere  manhood,"  produced  its  own 
needs  of  civilization,  which  was  largely  influenced 
by  natural  conditions,  as  society  always  has  been 
at  every  stage  in  its  development.  And  there  began 
a  new  civilization,  a  civilization  that,  whether  good 
or  bad,  whether  superior  to  or  inferior  to  the  civil 
ization  of  the  English,  obeyed  the  inexorable  law 
of  evolution  and  in  its  own  way  has  served  its  own 
purpose. 

Democracy  is  not  alone  a  polity.  It  is  something 
much  more  than  that.  A  people  born  in  a  demo 
cracy  unconsciously  acquire  ideas  and  a  mental 
process  that  make  them  unlike  the  subjects  of  a 
monarchy  or  the  citizens  of  a  country  in  which 
established  class  distinctions  exist.  We  shall  see, 
as  the  theme  unfolds,  the  moral  and  psychological 
effects  of  a  democratic  form  of  government. 

American  civilization  is  the  youngest  of  which 
the  world  knows.  It  is  still  formative.  This  makes 
a  serious  study  fantastic  almost,  for  judgment  is  but 
another  name  for  comparison ;  we  can  reach  a  con 
clusion  only  by  comparing  it  with  something  else, 
and  when  we  compare  American  civilization  with 


A  NEW  RACE  35 

that  of  any  other  modern  people  it  is  almost  as  if  we 
had  to  resort  to  a  miracle  to  explain  causes.  It  is 
as  if  the  boy  overnight  had  been  touched  by  the 
magician's  wand  and  awakes  a  man,  a  giant  in 
force  and  intellect,  and  yet  with  all  the  vital  enthu 
siasm  of  youth,  who  is  conscious  of  his  strength 
and  who  has  the  stripling's  contempt  for  age.  Men 
sneer  at  his  juvenescence  and  think  it  surprising  that 
he  is  still  so  crude,  and  wronder  when,  if  ever,  he  will 
emerge  from  adolescence  and  arrive  at  the  dignity 
of  man's  estate,  and  yet  they  stand  amazed  at  his 
powrer  and  his  mind.  He  defies  every  tradition,  the 
wisdom  of  his  elders  he  laughs  at  and  becomes  a 
law  unto  himself,  the  fallacy  of  theory  he  joyously 
mocks,  and  with  it  all  he  grows  stronger,  better, 
spiritually  more  exalted. 

The  same  difficulty  that  confronted  Bagehot 
meets  me,  but  in  a  much  greater  degree.  There  is 
great  difficulty,  he  says,  in  the  way  of  a  writer  who 
attempts  to  sketch  a  living  Constitution  —  a  Con 
stitution  that  is  an  actual  work  and  power.  The 
difficulty  is  that  the  subject  is  in  constant  change. 
If  this  is  so  in  the  case  of  a  Constitution,  how  much 
more  so  must  it  be  when  a  study  is  made  of  a  civili 
zation  that  is  still  in  a  state  of  flux,  that  is  constantly 
being  moulded  to  receive  new  impressions  ?  A  con 
temporary  writer,  Bagehot  says,  who  tries  to  paint 
what  is  before  him  is  puzzled  and  perplexed;  what 
he  sees  is  changing  daily.1  In  America  this  change 

1  Bagehot:  The  English  Constitution,  pp.  1-2. 


36  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

is  perpetual.  I  have  watched  it  in  the  few  years  that 
have  elapsed  since  I  began  this  study ;  it  has  caused 
me  more  than  once  to  revise  my  judgment.  America, 
says  Bryce,  changes  so  fast  that  every  few  years  a 
new  crop  of  books  is  needed  to  describe  the  new 
face  which  things  have  put  on,  the  new  problems 
that  have  appeared,  the  new  idea  germinating 
among  her  people,  the  new  and  unexpected  develop 
ments  for  evil  as  well  as  for  good  of  which  her 
established  institutions  have  been  found  capable.1 

With  equal  force  Reich  has  pointed  out  the  per 
plexities  one  encounters  at  every  turn.  But  sup 
pose  we  wish,  he  says,  to  investigate  a  question 
of  national  psychology,  we  have  no  laboratory  to 
appeal  to;  we  must  seek  sense  impressions  in  the 
world  abroad.  In  order  to  comprehend  the  char 
acteristics  of  one's  own  nation,  we  must  subject  it 
to  a  scrutinizing  comparison  with  other  nations. 
How  difficult  is  this  comparison  to  make.  How 
few  have  even  the  opportunity  of  making  it.  It 
implies  a  long  sojourn  in  foreign  countries  of  a 
person  endowed  with  keen  and  critical  faculties  of 
observation,  and  a  mastery  of  the  literature  and 
language  of  those  countries.  These  are  the  essen 
tials,  and  how  rarely  are  they  fulfilled.  But  with 
out  comparison  after  this  manner  there  can  be  no 
real  advance.2 

When  Europeans,  and  not  alone  Europeans  but 

1  Bryce:  The  American  Commonwealth,  vol.  i,  p.  2. 
8  Reich:  Success  Among  Nations,  p.  91. 


A  NEW  RACE  37 

many  Americans  also,  deplore  the  crudeness  of 
American  civilization  and  become  despondent  be 
cause  America  has  not  yet  produced  a  Leonardo 
da  Vinci,  a  Wren,  a  Shakespeare,  a  Mozart,  and 
pronounce  their  obiter  dicta  that  America  is  deaf  to 
the  higher  voices,  they  forget  that  Europe  has  a 
heritage  of  a  thousand  years  and  America  but  a 
hundred ;  that  men  are  the  product  of  their  soil  and 
their  environment,  and  art  is  born  not  in  the  stress 
of  commercialism,  but  comes  later.  History  has 
served  us  to  no  purpose  if  we  do  not  recognize  this. 
Art  is  the  expression  of  luxury  and  fashion  and 
idleness,  of  a  certain  form  of  voluptuousness;  it 
flourishes  best  where  there  is  a  Maecenas  and  his 
order  to  give  to  it  the  approval  of  their  patronage;  or 
it  is  the  expression  of  religion;  or  it  is  the  soul  cry 
of  a  people  despairing  of  the  present  and  hopeless 
of  the  future.  In  the  beginning  art  was  the  sym 
bolism  of  religion  or  superstition;  later  it  lost  its 
original  meaning  and  became  conventionalized,  and 
then  commercialized.  In  America  there  is  great 
luxury,  fashion  peculiar  to  American  conditions, 
but  little  idleness;  voluptuousness  as  a  national 
quality  does  not  exist;  of  religion  there  is  much, 
but  it  does  not  take  the  form  that  inspired  the 
Greeks  and  the  cathedral  builders  of  mediaeval 
Europe;  the  American  people  instead  of  despairing 
face  the  problems  of  the  present  and  the  unknown 
questions  of  the  future  with  supreme  self-reliance. 
In  a  word,  their  national  vitality  is  too  high  for 


38  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

them  yet  to  have  reached  that  stage  when  imag 
ination  makes  a  greater  appeal  than  action.  The 
artistic  temperament  and  the  strenuous,  masterful, 
almost  brutal  qualities  of  the  man  of  action  do  not 
reside  in  the  same  body.  Almost  universally  the 
men  who  have  sung  their  songs  of  incomparable 
beauty,  "too  wise  to  be  wholly  poets  and  yet  too 
surely  poets  to  be  implacably  wise,"  in  whom 
Weltschmerz  has  colored  their  whole  vision  of  life, 
have  shrunk  from  the  rough  contact  of  the  world 
and  hated  the  very  thought  of  strife. 

If  we  have  read  history  aright,  if  we  do  not 
confuse  causes  with  effects  or  underestimate  the 
forces  that  produced  such  momentous  results,  one 
conclusion  is  ineluctable.  No  race  has  ever  given 
proof  of  a  high  order  of  mental  attainments  until 
after  it  has  enjoyed  a  long  period  of  great  material 
prosperity.  Art  and  literature  are  not  born  in  the 
dregs  of  national  poverty;  no  people  struggling  for 
a  bare  existence  and  content  with  food  or  raiment 
enough  merely  to  keep  themselves  alive  have  given 
birth  to  the  deathless  voice  of  the  bard.  After  the 
struggle  for  existence  has  been  won  there  comes 
the  desire  for  comfort,  and  then  follows  luxury; 
and  what  is  luxury  but  the  appeal  to  the  senses, 
the  gratification  of  the  body  or  the  delight  of  the 
mind,  the  enjoyment  of  the  sensual  or  the  quick 
ening  of  the  emotions  aroused  by  music  or  art  or 
poetry  ? 

But  it  will  be  said  that  the  poets  whose  songs 


A  NEW  RACE  39 

are  in  the  hearts  of  the  people  have  been  of  the 
people;  that  it  was  suffering  and  poverty  and  great 
compassion  that  made  them  articulate;  that  it  was 
their  protest  against  wrongs  too  great  to  be  silently 
endured;  that  it  was  only  because  they  knew  the 
hopeless  misery  of  the  downtrodden  that  they  were 
able  to  voice  it;  that  prosperity  would  have  made 
them  content  and  dumb;  which  is  much  like  say 
ing  that  the  world  has  been  deprived  of  its  great 
poets  because  there  are  so  many  successful  green 
grocers.  The  greater  the  wealth  of  a  people, 
whether  a  community  or  a  nation,  the  greater  its 
poverty,  so  far  apart  are  the  two  ends  of  the  social 
scale,  so  far  apart  must  they  be  when  wealth  is  the 
reward  of  individual  endeavor  or  is  dependent  upon 
audacity,  courage,  industry,  or  an  intuitive  sense 
of  possibilities.  Among  a  people  where  the  dead 
level  of  conditions  exists  there  is,  it  is  true,  no 
sense  of  social  injustice  because  all  are  practically 
equal,  but  there  is  also  no  stimulus;  there  is  no 
Promethean  voice  to  flame,  no  heart  to  be  touched. 
If  it  is  true  that  the  poets  of  the  people  have  been 
of  the  people  —  and  it  is  a  generalization  to  be 
accepted  only  with  the  respect  due  to  all  general 
izations  —  we  now  see  why;  we  now  see  why  there 
can  be  no  great  poets  when  life  flows  placidly  like 
a  stream  in  which  there  is  not  even  a  rock  to  add 
the  variety  of  a  ripple  to  its  dull  monotony  or 
momentarily  to  reflect  the  sun's  glint. 

Out  of  the  depths  of  his  soul  man  voices  his  faith 


40  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

or  his  despair;  from  his  innermost  self  comes  the 
hymn  of  victory  or  the  cry  of  desolation.  And  the 
poets  sing  and  the  people  hearken  when  there  are 
great  deeds  to  be  done  or  great  wrongs  to  be  re 
dressed,  when  men  are  to  be  inspired  to  resist  or 
to  defend  themselves.  War  and  poverty,  the  mate 
rial  —  there  is  the  inspiration  of  the  poets. 

It  is  something  more  than  a  theory  that  has  here 
been  advanced.  It  rests  on  the  facts  of  history. 
The  great  art  and  literature  of  Greece  and  Rome 
were  given  to  the  world  at  a  time  when  their 
splendor  was  unrivaled,  when  their  riches  were 
beyond  compare,  when  with  great  wealth  there  was 
poverty  equally  as  great.  Ferrero  calls  our  attention 
to  the  same  phenomenon  in  Egypt.  At  the  time 
when  her  agriculture  was  prosperous,  her  manufac 
tures  flourishing,  her  commerce  widely  spread,  her 
schools  famous,  then  also  "her  artistic  life  was  vig 
orous."  The  artisans  of  Alexandria  manufactured 
the  most  delicate  fabrics,  perfumes,  glassware,  papy 
rus,  and  numerous  other  articles  of  art  and  luxury 
which  were  ever  sold  in  the  markets  of  the  world. 
Egypt  was  the  home  of  luxury  and  elegance,  and 
her  painters  and  her  decorators  went  everywhere, 
even  to  Italy;  while  to  Egypt,  then  a  centre  of  learn 
ing,  from  all  parts  of  the  world,  even  from  Greece, 
students  came  to  study  in  the  schools  of  medicine 
and  astronomy  and  literature  at  Alexandria.1 

The  great  intellectual  movement  in  England  came 

1  Ferrero:  The  Greatness  and  Decline  of  Rome,  vol.  iii,  pp.  240-241. 


A  NEW  RACE  41 

at  a  time  when  she  was  rich  as  she  had  never  been 
before.  The  Elizabethan  age  was  an  age  of  intense 
material  prosperity,  when  wealth  was  being  rapidly 
accumulated,  when  commerce  possessed  the  whole 
people,  when  the  spirit  of  adventure  had  seized 
them,  and  yet  it  presented  the  same  contrast  that 
has  always  been  witnessed  at  this  stage  of  national 
development.  On  the  one  hand  there  was  great 
luxury  and  great  wealth,  on  the  other  there  was 
great  suffering  and  great  poverty,  and  the  condition 
of  the  poor  was  deplorable.  The  imagination  is 
fired  by  the  deeds  of  Raleigh  and  his  captains;  by 
that  brave  battle  in  the  Channel ;  we  stand  with  un 
covered  head  before  the  tomb  of  Shakespeare;  the 
great  statesmen  and  philosophers  have  left  their  im 
perishable  record;  but  let  not  our  emotions  nor  our 
admiration  blind  us  to  the  direful  fact  that  it  was  in 
the  reign  of  Elizabeth  that  the  first  poor-law  was 
placed  on  the  statute-books.  In  a  subsequent  chap 
ter  I  shall  more  at  length  discuss  the  causes  that 
have  produced  as  well  as  arrested  American  art. 

I  have  laid  down  the  proposition  that  the  civil 
ization  of  America  is  not  that  of  England ;  that  the 
American  people  are  no  longer  English,  but  a  new 
race.  I  shall  now  endeavor  to  show  how  it  came 
about  that  the  civilization  of  England  was  checked 
in  America  and  ran  in  new  channels,  the  causes  that 
have  produced  a  new  race,  and  the  conclusions  to  be 
drawn  from  the  facts  established. 


CHAPTER  III 

THE   INFLUENCE   OF   ENVIRONMENT   ON   RACE 

IN  tracing  the  development  of  American  civiliza 
tion,  the  growth  of  the  American  race,  and  the  for 
mation  of  national  characteristics,  we  are  impressed 
with  the  fact  that  the  history  of  the  American  people 
properly  divides  itself  into  four  grand  divisions,  each 
epochal  in  character-building.  It  is  unnecessary  to 
resort  to  empirical  or  arbitrary  methods  to  ascertain 
where  the  dividing  lines  fall.  They  are  the  strata  of 
human  formation.  These  four  epochs  are:  — 

1.  Colonial  Days  —  the  period  from  the  arrival 
of  the  first  settlers  at  Jamestown  and  the  establish 
ment  of  the  Plymouth  Colony  until  the  American 
nation  was  born  in  the  throes  of  the  revolt  against 
oppression. 

2.  Independence  —  the  period  that  saw  the  birth 
of  a  new  political  and  moral  creed. 

3.  The  Civil  War  —  the  period  that  was  the  form 
ative  stage  in  the  American  character;  that  began 
in  war  in  defense  of  justice  and  closed  in  war  in 
defense  of  human  liberty  and  political  solidarity. 

4.  The  Spanish  War  —  the  period  from  the  close 
of  the  Civil  War  to  the  present;  that  hardened  the 
mould  of  the  American  character  and  opened  the 
vista  to  the  future. 


ENVIRONMENT   ON   RACE  43 

Observe,  as  throwing  a  vivid  light  on  the  causes 
that  have  produced  the  mental  and  moral  charac 
teristics  of  the  American  people,  that  each  of  these 
epochs  was  born  in  the  passion  of  war,  at  each  suc 
cessive  stage  of  American  progress  the  heavens  were 
riven  with  the  storm  of  conflict,  and  the  daughters  of 
Jupiter  came  forth. 

"  Can  tyrants  but  by  tyrants  conquered  be, 

And  freedom  find  no  champion  and  no  child, 
Such  as  Columbia  saw  arise,  when  she 

Sprang  forth  a  Pallas,  armed  and  undefiled  ? " 

The  beginning  of  America  was  a  resistance 
against  religious  oppression  and  a  revolt  against 
the  suppression  of  personal  liberty;  and  rebellion 
unless  quickly  checked  leads  to  war,  and  it  led,  in 
this  case,  as  was  inevitable,  to  w^ar  to  preserve 
liberty  and  to  perpetuate  an  ideal.  Each  period 
was  unconsciously  but  inexorably  the  prepara 
tion  and  precursor  of  that  which  followed,  and 
each  in  passing  wrought  with  iron  hand  in  Ameri 
can  development.  Perhaps  in  all  the  history  of 
all  the  world  we  shall  find  nothing  so  remarkable 
as  this  —  race  development  that  can  be  directly 
traced  to  the  effects  of  war.  But  observe  again, 
because  it  is  one  of  those  antinomies  with  which 
the  history  of  the  American  people  abounds,  that 
while  war  has  more  profoundly  affected  their  char 
acter  than  that  of  any  other  modern  race,  for  the 
first  one  hundred  and  fifty  years  succeeding  their 
birth  they  fought  no  war  in  defense  of  religious 


44  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

freedom  or  in  the  name  of  religion,  they  were  not 
passed  over  like  chattels  from  one  sovereign  to 
another,  they  knew  no  flag  but  their  own,  they 
engaged  in  no  war  of  conquest  solely  to  bring  an 
alien  people  under  their  domination.  While  all 
Europe  was  involved  in  that  great  Thirty  Years' 
struggle;  while  the  history  of  Europe  for  a  century 
and  a  half  following  the  English  settlement  of 
America  is  a  continuous  record  of  war;  while  wars 
of  the  Spanish  Succession,  of  the  Polish  Succession, 
of  the  Austrian  Succession,  even  of  Jenkins's  Ear, 
burden  the  pages  of  history  and  make  one  weary 
to  discover  what  it  was  all  about  and  why  it  was 
worth  fighting  for;  while  Europe  was  one  vast 
armed  camp  drenched  in  blood  and  the  breeding- 
ground  for  the  sordid  ambitions  of  kings  and 
statesmen,  America,  far  removed  from  the  scene 
of  conflict,  went  forward  in  her  spiritual  and 
material  development.  We  shall  see  later  how  pro 
foundly  American  political  institutions  and  Ameri 
can  psychology  were  influenced  by  the  conflict 
with  the  French  and  Indians,  but  the  consequences 
were  entirely  different  from  those  resulting  from 
the  wars  of  Europe,  which  made  every  man  a 
soldier,  who  when  he  was  not  fighting  under  his 
sovereign's  banner  as  his  liegeman  or  as  his  mer 
cenary  became  a  rebel  against  the  kingly  power. 
The  border  warfare  kept  the  colonist  alert  to  defend 
his  foothold  in  the  New  World,  but  his  aim  was  se 
curity,  his  ambition  the  unmolested  homestead  right. 


ENVIRONMENT  ON  RACE  45 

As  the  American  mind  gradually  reveals  itself,  the 
effect  of  this  political  isolation  at  the  formative 
stage  of  the  race  will  be  clearly  seen. 

A  nation  is  the  sum  of  many  influences,  but  none 
have  more  weight  in  the  formation  of  character 
and  the  mental  type  of  a  people  than  the  natural 
phenomena  of  the  country  in  which  they  live. 
Extreme  heat  and  cold  are  reflected  not  only  in  the 
physical  appearance  of  the  race,  but  also  in  its 
mental  characteristics.  Nature,  to  help  man  adapt 
himself  to  his  environment,  has  made  the  races 
that  dwell  nearest  the  sun  more  lithe,  more  sinewy, 
less  burdened  with  superfluous  flesh  than  those 
who  live  in  colder  climates,  who  need  greater  pro 
tection  from  the  extreme  rigors  of  their  long 
winters;  and  as  they  are  physically  so  they  are 
mentally.  The  men  and  women  of  the  south,  in 
whose  veins  run  the  fire  and  heat  of  the  sun,  who 
bask  in  a  riot  of  color,  who  are  influenced  by 
the  witchery  of  radiant,  caressing  moonlight,  have 
always  been  gifted  with  temperaments  more  vivid, 
more  poetic,  and  more  imaginative  than  the  men 
and  women  of  the  north,  slower,  more  precise, 
more  practical.  The  plainsman  is  a  different  type 
from  the  mountaineer,  and  both  show  a  variation 
from  the  inhabitant  of  the  seacoast.  An  arid,  sterile 
country  produces  a  race  unlike  that  in  which  the 
land  is  fruitful  and  rivers  abound.  Trees  and 
mountains,  valleys  and  prairies  are  the  indelible 
pictures  of  memory  that  unconsciously  color  life, 


46  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

as  the  pictures  of  childhood  leave  an  ineffaceable 
recollection.1 

These  things  are  not  new,  they  are  as  old  as 
creation  itself.  Man  has  always  been  influenced 
by  his  surroundings,  always  keenly  sensitive  to 
exterior  impressions.  To  a  certain  extent  their 
force  is  blunted  when  countless  generations  have 
looked  upon  the  same  mountains  or  the  same 
valleys,  for  each  succeeding  generation  has  in  ifr 
a  part  at  least  of  the  stored  emotions  and  sensa 
tions  of  its  predecessors,  the  inherent  faculty  of 
comprehension  without  ratiocination,  exactly  as 
the  animal  instinctively  takes  to  the  water  or 
avoids  it.  To  the  child  who  opens  his  eyes  on  the 
unfathomable  mystery  of  the  sea,  the  sea  is  as 
natural  as  the  mountain,  which  he  beholds  for  the 
first  time,  is  abnormal  and  terrifying.  The  civil 
ization  of  most  peoples  runs  too  far  back  for  us  to 
appreciate  the  influences  of  climate  and  natural 
phenomena  in  moulding  the  characteristics  of  race, 
but  in  America  we  are  so  close  to  its  genesis  that 
we  not  only  know  but  we  can  actually  see  what 
the  effects  have  been. 

To  have  a  correct  understanding  of  the  American 
character  it  is  necessary  at  the  outset  to  establish 
certain  facts  which  nearly  all  writers  on  American 
race  development  have  treated,  if  they  touched  on 
them  at  all,  as  only  incidental  instead  of  being 
a  primary  cause.  I  maintain  that  when  a  highly 

1  Cf.  May:  Democracy  in  Europe,  introduction,  p.  xxxix  et  seq. 


ENVIRONMENT  ON   RACE  47 

civilized  race  is  transplanted  to  a  new  environment, 
that  environment  entirely  different  from  the  old, 
different  in  climate  and  other  physical  characteris 
tics,  and  to  support  life  it  is  necessary  for  these 
people  from  the  very  first  to  engage  in  an  unrelent 
ing  struggle  against  nature,  the  effect  of  that  struggle 
will  be  seen  in  the  mental  characteristics  of  the 
people  new  to  the  soil.  It  is  a  remarkable  fact  that 
the  great  evolutionary  authorities  -  -  Darwin,  Spen 
cer,  Wallace,  Haeckel,  Le  Conte,  to  mention  only  a 
few  of  the  most  eminent  —  are  either  silent  on  this 
important  branch  of  psychological  investigation,  or 
else  dismiss  it  with  merely  a  passing  reference,  and 
yet  its  truth  cannot  be  doubted.  It  is  sustained  by 
the  teachings  of  biogeny,  morphology,  and  sociology, 
and  is  further  fortified  by  the  historical  study  of 
race  development.  No  one,  I  think,  can  study  the 
psychology  of  history  and  not  be  profoundly  im 
pressed  by  the  dominant  influence  that  nature  has 
exercised  in  the  progress  of  organized  society.  In 
the  ascertainment  of  the  causes  that  have  resulted 
in  the  shoot  of  the  race  varying  so  materially  from 
the  parent  stem  the  importance  of  the  physical 
cannot  be  overestimated. 

Spencer  says :  "  We  see  that  .  .  .  the  changes  or 
processes  displayed  by  a  living  body  are  especially 
related  to  the  changes  or  processes  in  its  environ 
ment.  And  here  we  have  the  needful  supplement  to 
our  conception  of  life.  Adding  this  all  important 
characteristic,  our  conception  of  life  becomes  — 


48  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  definite  combination  of  heterogeneous  changes, 
both  simultaneous  and  successive,  in  correspondence 
with  external  coexistences  and  sequences." 1 

At  much  greater  length  in  his  Principles  of 
Sociology,  under  the  title  of  "Original  External 
Factors,"  Spencer  treats  of  the  influence  of  climate 
and  physical  conditions  on  race  development,  but 
stops  just  short  of  the  question  involved,  frankly 
admitting  that  it  is  outside  of  his  province  and  is 
the  property  of  the  specialist.  After  showing  that 
temperature,  heat,  light,  moisture,  the  configuration 
of  the  surface,  the  fertility  of  the  soil,  and  the  na 
ture  of  the  flora  and  fauna  all  "have  their  effects 
on  human  activities,  and  therefore  on  social  phe 
nomena,"  he  says:  "But  a  detailed  account  of  the 
original  external  factors,  whether  of  the  more  im 
portant  kinds  outlined  in  the  preceding  pages  or 
of  the  less  important  kind  exemplified,  pertains  to 
Special  Sociology.  Any  one  who,  carrying  with  him 
the  general  principles  of  the  science,  undertook  to 
interpret  the  evolution  of  each  society,  would  have 
to  describe  completely  these  many  local  causes  in 
their  various  kinds  and  degrees.  Such  an  under 
taking  must  be  left  for  the  sociologists  of  the  future. 

"Here  my  purpose  has  been,"  he  says,  "to  give 
a  general  idea  of  the  original  external  factors,  in  their 
different  classes  and  orders ;  so  as  to  impress  on  the 
reader  the  truth,  barely  enunciated  in  the  preceding 
chapter,  that  the  characters  of  the  environment 

1  Spencer:  The  Principles  of  Biology,  vol.  i,  p.  74. 


ENVIRONMENT   ON  RACE  49 

cooperate  with  the  characters  of  human  beings  in 
determining  social  phenomena."  1 

I  give  one  more  quotation  from  Spencer.  "Di 
vesting  this  conception  of  all  superfluities,  reducing 
it  to  its  most  abstract  shape,  we  see  that  Life  is 
definable  as  the  continuous  adjustment  of  internal 
relations  to  external  relations.  And  when  we  so 
define  it,  we  discover  that  the  physical  and  the 
psychical  life  are  equally  comprehended  by  the 
definition." 2 

Huxley  says:  "It  is  a  general  belief  that  men  of 
different  stocks  differ  as  much  physically  as  they  do 
morphologically ;  but  it  is  very  hard  to  prove,  in  any 
particular  case,  how  much  of  a  supposed  national 
characteristic  is  due  to  inherent  physiological  pecul 
iarities,  and  how  much  to  the  influence  of  circum 
stances."  3 

Darwin  gives  the  weight  of  his  authority  to  the 
influence  of  conditions  upon  physical  development. 
"We  have  seen  in  the  second  chapter,"  he  says, 
"  that  the  conditions  of  life  affect  the  development 
of  the  bodily  frame  in  a  direct  manner,  and  that  the 
effects  are  transmitted.  Thus,  as  is  generally  ad 
mitted,  the  European  settlers  in  the  United  States 
undergo  a  slight  but  extraordinarily  rapid  change  of 
appearance.  Their  bodies  and  limbs  become  elon 
gated  ;  and  I  hear  from  Colonel  Bernys  that  during 
the  late  war  in  the  United  States,  good  evidence  was 

1  Spencer:  The  Principles  of  Sociology,  vol.  i,  part  1,  p.  16  et  seq. 

2  Spencer:  First  Principles,  p.  86. 

3  Huxley :  Methods  and  Results  of  Ethnology,  p.  240. 


50  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

afforded  of  this  fact  by  the  ridiculous  appearance 
presented  by  the  German  regiments,  when  dressed 
in  ready-made  clothes  manufactured  for  the  Ameri 
can  market,  and  which  were  much  too  long  for  the 
men  in  every  way.  There  is,  also,  a  considerable 
body  of  evidence  showing  that  in  the  Southern  States 
the  house  slaves  of  the  third  generation  presented 
a  markedly  different  appearance  from  the  field 
slaves."  * 

And  Darwin  again  says:  "Adaptation  to  any  spe 
cial  climate  may  be  looked  at  as  a  quality  readily 
grafted  on  an  innate  wide  flexibility  of  constitution, 
common  to  most  animals.  On  this  view,  the  capac 
ity  of  enduring  the  most  different  climates  by  man 
himself  .  .  .  ought  not  to  be  looked  at  as  anoma 
lies,  but  as  examples  of  a  very  common  flexibility  of 
constitution,  brought,  under  peculiar  circumstances, 
into  action." 2 

"Races  would  advance  and  become  improved," 
Wallace  says,  "merely  by  the  harsh  discipline  of  a 
sterile  soil  and  inclement  seasons.  Under  their  in 
fluence  a  hardier,  a  more  provident,  a  more  social 
race  would  be  developed  than  in  those  regions  where 
the  earth  produces  a  perennial  supply  of  vegetable 
food,  and  where  neither  foresight  nor  ingenuity  is 
required  to  prepare  for  the  rigors  of  winter.  And  is 
it  not  a  fact  that  in  all  ages,  and  in  every  quarter  of 
the  globe,  the  inhabitants  of  temperate  have  been 

1  Darwin:  The  Descent  of  Man,  p.  196. 

2  Darwin:  The  Origin  of  Species,  vol.  i,  pp.  175-176. 


ENVIRONMENT  ON  RACE  51 

superior  to  those  of  hotter  countries  ?  All  the  great 
invasions  and  displacements  of  races  have  been  from 
north  to  south,  rather  than  the  reverse;  and  we 
have  no  record  of  there  ever  having  existed,  any 
more  than  there  exists  to-day,  a  solitary  instance  of 
an  indigenous  inter-tropical  civilization."  1 

Buckle  ascribes  to  climate,  food,  soil,  and  "the 
general  aspect  of  nature"  those  physical  agents  "by 
which  the  human  race  is  most  powerfully  influ 
enced,"  and  by  "the  general  aspect  of  nature,"  he 
says,  "I  mean  those  appearances  which,  though 
presented  chiefly  to  the  sight,  have,  through  the 
medium  of  that  or  other  senses,  directed  the  associa 
tion  of  ideas,  and  hence  in  different  countries  have 
given  rise  to  different  habits  of  national  thought."  2 
That  Buckle  was  a  profound  believer  in  the  physical 
agents  already  mentioned  is  known  to  every  student 
of  his  monumental  work,  and  he  elaborates  his  the 
sis  at  length.  "  It  now  remains  for  me,"  he  says, 
"to  examine  the  effects  of  those  other  physical 
agents  to  which  I  have  given  the  collective  name  of 
Aspects  of  Nature,  and  which  will  be  found  suggest 
ive  of  some  very  wide  and  comprehensive  inquiries 
into  the  influence  exercised  by  the  external  world  in 
predisposing  men  to  certain  habits  of  thought,  and 
thus  giving  a  particular  tone  to  religion,  arts,  litera 
ture,  and,  in  a  word,  to  all  the  principal  manifesta 
tions  of  the  human  mind."  3 

1  Wallace:  Natural  Selection  and  Tropical  Nature,  p.  177. 

3  Buckle:  History  of  Civilization,  vol.  i,  p.  29.         s  Buckle,  op.  cit.,  p.  85. 


52  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

I  think  the  conclusion  can  be  properly  reached, 
based  not  on  a  priori  reasoning  but  sustained  by 
evidence,  that  environment  has  an  enormous  influ 
ence  on  the  mind  of  man,  and  this  influence  is  as 
powerful  mentally  as  the  physical  characteristics  of 
a  country  are  upon  his  structure ;  just  as  the  struggle 
for  existence  has  developed  certain  organs,  both  in 
animals  and  men,  and  no  physiologist  will  chal 
lenge  the  correctness  of  this  assertion.  But  phys 
ical  and  structural  variations  are  easily  recognized ; 
mental  processes  are  not  only  slower  but  more 
subtle ;  the  mind  is  concealed,  and  the  changes  that 
affect  the  mind  of  a  race  are  so  gradual  that  they 
can  be  ascertained  only  by  long  and  laborious  re 
search.  I  may  go  further  and  assume  an  even  more 
positive  tone.  With  the  sole  exception  of  the  Ameri 
can  people  it  has  been  impossible  scientifically  to 
study  the  influence  of  environment  on  mentality, 
because  of  four  obstacles. 

In  the  first  place,  the  early  records  of  all  other 
races  are  lost  in  obscurity,  and  although  we  have 
in  many  instances  literature  and  traditions,  we 
have  no  such  precise  literature,  no  such  accurate 
record  of  any  people  from  their  beginning  as  we 
have  of  the  Americans.  Secondly,  other  races  have 
been  influenced  in  greater  or  lesser  degree  by  the 
native  civilization  of  which  they  became  a  part. 
This  was  absent  in  America.  There  was  no  native 
civilization.  We  shall  have  occasion  later  to  refer 
to  this.  Again,  every  other  race,  whether  as  con- 


ENVIRONMENT   ON   RACE  53 

queror  or  emigrant,  that  have  spread  beyond  the 
confines  of  their  own  country  or  territory,  whether 
merely  as  a  nomadic  tribe  or  a  people  with  a  defined 
civilization,  grafted  themselves  on  the  native  stock 
or  absorbed  it  into  themselves,  their  own  civiliza 
tion  becoming  tempered  and  modified  in  the  pro 
cess.  And  lastly,  all  other  races  have  engaged  in 
wars  and  conquests,  and  the  effect  of  war  in  the 
formative  period  of  national  character  has  lasting 
results.  The  American  people,  as  we  have  remarked 
in  a  previous  chapter,  engaged  in  war  in  their 
formative  period,  but  it  was  a  war  neither  for 
conquest  nor  aggression;  it  was  a  war  inspired 
by  a  cause  unlike  that  of  any  other  in  history, 
and  it  produced  certain  well-defined  psychological 
tendencies. 

We  shall  now  consider  the  climatal  conditions 
found  in  the  United  States  and  see  how  far-reach 
ing  they  have  been  in  the  formation  of  American 
character. 


CHAPTER  IV 

CLIMATIC   AMALGAMATION    OF   RACE 

THE  United  States  is  in  the  temperate  zone,  but 
it  enjoys  all  variations  of  temperature;  in  some 
parts  its  summers  are  almost  tropical  in  their 
intensity  and  the  winters  are  arctic  in  their  severity. 
These  wide  variations  in  temperature  in  a  people 
of  common  stock,  under  one  political  system,  in 
spired  by  the  same  ambitions,  have  resulted  in 
remarkable  race  characteristics.  The  people  of 
the  North  —  of  all  those  states  lying  north  of  the 
fortieth  degree  of  latitude,  whose  winters  are  long 
and  severe,  but  whose  summers  compensate,  the 
temperature  rising  west  of  the  eightieth  meridian  - 
have  the  vigor,  energy,  and  physical  alertness  of  the 
people  of  northern  Europe.  South  of  the  fortieth 
parallel  of  latitude  winter  is  milder  and  summer 
long  and  hot,  at  times  and  in  places  rivaling  the 
heat  of  the  East,  but  still  not  so  hot  that  the  white 
man  cannot  labor  and  live  without  injury  to  his 
health.  In  some  parts  of  some  of  the  states  of  the 
South  snow  is  practically  unknown  and  frost  is 
rarely  experienced.  The  long  hot  summers  and 
mild  winters  have  made  the  Southern  man  differ 
ent  from  the  Northern;  he  is  less  energetic,  more 
inclined  to  take  life  easy,  in  a  measure  less  enter- 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE          55 

prising,  and  his  resource  and  his  initiative  have  not 
been  so  highly  developed;  and  environment  has 
also  had  its  effect.  The  South  was  formerly  purely 
an  agricultural  region,  and  the  nature  of  its  crops 
-cotton,  tobacco,  rice  —  and  the  conditions  under 
which  they  were  grown  were  conducive  to  laissez- 
faire  and  invited  to  a  leisurely  life.  The  struggle 
for  existence  pressed  with  less  severity  in  the 
South  and  held  latent  those  qualities  that  are 
brought  out  by  the  stress  of  competition  or  the  con 
flict  with  nature.  Since  the  South  has  ceased  to  be 
purely  an  agricultural  region  and  has  turned  its 
energies  to  manufactures,  its  iron  furnaces  and 
cotton  mills  now  fast  competing  with  the  North,  it 
has  lost  some  of  its  former  characteristics  and  there 
is  in  progress  another  of  those  psychological  trans 
itions  that  have  at  successive  periods  produced 
American  racial  development.  The  change,  how 
ever,  is  slow,  and  its  full  effect  will  not  be  seen  in 
this  generation. 

Speaking  broadly,  it  may  be  said  that  all  the 
gradations  of  temperature  to  be  found  in  Europe 
are  experienced  in  the  United  States,  which  is  one 
of  the  physical  factors  that  have  entered  into  the 
composition  of  a  new  race.  The  constant  effort  of 
breeders  of  stock  and  of  floriculturists  is  to  improve 
the  breed  or  the  flower  by  crossing  it  with  a  strain 
the  product  of  a  different  environment,  or  to  graft 
on  it  a  growth  that  has  its  own  peculiarities  of  soil 
and  climate.  Here  we  see  the  recognition  of  the 


56  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

fundamental  law  that  in  the  animal  and  vege 
table  kingdoms  what  corresponds  to  character  in 
man  —  in  animals  and  fruits  and  flowers  struc 
ture,  size,  color  —  is  the  result  of  environment. 
Man  has  less  scientifically  endeavored  to  improve 
the  human  race  and  has  trusted  to  the  happy- 
go-lucky  chance  of  natural  selection.  There  is 
to-day  no  unmixed  race.  The  theory  of  the  un- 
vitiated  strain,  both  in  man  and  animals,  is  now 
known  to  be  a  fallacy.  The  great  races  are  races 
of  mixed  blood  and  cross-breeding.  King  Cophe- 
tua  needs  the  blood  of  the  beggar  maid  to  revive 
the  royal  line.  Nations  like  trees  die  from  the  top 
and  are  strengthened  at  the  roots;  they  must  be 
fed  from  the  ground  up.  A  nation  whose  people 
marry  and  intermarry  in  their  own  class  has  pro 
nounced  its  doom,  for  strength  is  to  be  found  only 
in  a  judicious  admixture  of  blood  to  overcome 
the  degeneration  of  luxury  and  the  absence  of 
effort. 

The  effect  on  a  homogeneous  people  living  in 
a  country  whose  climatic  variations  are  extreme  is 
eventually  to  amalgamate  in  the  race  the  composite 
climatic  influence.  The  daughter  of  a  Russian 
father  and  a  Spanish  mother  will,  under  normal 
conditions,  inherit  some  of  the  temperamental  or 
climatic  qualities  of  one  or  both;  and  that  child 
marrying  an  Englishman  will  transmit  to  her  child, 
in  a  more  or  less  marked  degree,  her  own  qualities 
as  well  as  those  of  its  father.  But  between  the  Rus- 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE         57 

sian  and  the  Spaniard,  between  two  people  of  alien 
races,  there  is  always  the  insurmountable  barrier 
of  race  and  language,  of  customs  and  traditions,  of 
history  and  political  institutions,  frequently  of  re 
ligion.  In  the  United  States  climatic  influence  en 
counters  no  obstacles.  The  man  from  Maine,  where 
winter  is  Siberian  in  its  severity,  marries  a  girl  from 
Louisiana,  whose  summer  is  as  voluptuously  en 
ticing  as  that  of  Spain,  and  they  move  to  California, 
where  in  some  parts  roses  bloom  in  the  open  air  in 
winter  and  in  other  parts  the  fog  is  as  cold  and 
penetrating  as  it  is  off  the  English  coast ;  their  child 
marries  a  man  from  Dakota,  where  the  summer  is 
dry  and  hot  and  in  winter  the  land  lies  buried  deep 
under  its  covering  of  snow.  But  the  man  from 
Maine  and  the  woman  from  Louisiana,  the  Califor- 
nian  or  the  Dakotan,  are  as  one  in  language,  in 
thought,  in  purpose,  and  the  same  ambitions  ani 
mate  both ;  both  owe  allegiance  to  the  same  political 
institutions ;  neither  knows  any  other  country  which 
means  more  to  the  one  than  it  does  to  the  other.  A 
woman,  an  alien,  may  merge  herself  in  the  life  and 
country  of  her  husband,  and  yet  there  is  that  inde 
finable  something,  the  result  of  heredity  and  envi 
ronment,  that  makes  her  a  little  apart  from  her 
husband  and  his  people,  no  matter  how  completely 
she  adjusts  herself  to  her  new  surroundings.  No 
thing  of  this  kind  exists  in  the  United  States,  where 
the  people  are  one  people;  sectional  rivalries  and 
physical  conditions  and  the  influence  of  descent  pro- 


58  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

duce  a  variation  in  the  type,  but  not  a  departure 
from  it.1 

The  United  States,  as  a  whole,  enjoys  about  the 
same  average  temperature  as  western  Europe  as 
a  whole,  but  the  winters  are  much  colder  and  the 
summers  are  much  warmer  in  America  than  in 
Europe.2  Climatically  the  United  States  is  a  north 
ern  and  a  southern  country,  but  with  distinctive 
phenomena  not  elsewhere  found.  The  isothermal 
lines  ascend  as  they  approach  New  York;  the  tem 
perature  at  fifty-two  degrees  of  latitude  in  the 
United  Kingdom  is  similar  to  that  at  thirty-two 
degrees  of  latitude  in  the  United  States,  a  difference 
of  nine  hundred  and  fifty-six  miles.3  The  inhab 
itants  of  the  British  Isles,  Boutmy  says,  can  travel 
from  one  end  of  the  country  to  the  other  without 
experiencing  any  change  of  temperature,  but  in  the 
United  States  the  passage  from  ocean  to  ocean  is 
marked  by  frequent  changes  of  temperature,  as  it  is 
also  by  frequent  variations  of  soil.  The  soil  is  rich 
and  fertile  in  places,  arid  and  sterile  in  others,  but 
the  fertile  area  vastly  overbalances  the  sterile  re 
gions,  and  the  spirit  of  enterprise  is  encouraged 
because  energy  intelligently  directed  is  sure  to  be 

1  "  How  rapidly  nationalities  merge  in  this  country  is  seen  in  a  case  that  is 
not  imaginary,  of  a  young  man  whose  father  was  a  Frenchman  and  whose 
mother  was  an  American  of  English  descent.     His  wife's  mother  is  an  Irish 
woman,  and  her  father  a  German.     Thus  that  marriage  rolled  four  nation 
alities  into  one  within  two  generations." — Horace  Graves:  "The  Huguenot 
in  New  England,"  The  New  England  Magazine,  vol.  xi,  p.  503. 

2  Channing:  A  Student's  History  of  the  United  States,  p.  2  et  seq. 
8  Boutmy:  The  English  People,  p.  4. 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE         59 

profitably  rewarded.  Nature  says  to  the  American 
that  if  he  works  hard  and  brings  to  his  labor  that 
intelligence  which  is  demanded,  he  can  feel  sure  of 
ample  returns,  but  he  must  not  relax  his  efforts. 

It  is  one  of  the  paradoxes  of  Nature,  which  has 
had  its  effect  on  the  character  of  the  people,  that  in 
those  regions  which  produce  the  great  staples  to 
support  life,  the  wheat-  and  corn-growing  belts,  the 
variations  of  temperature  are  extreme,  intense  heat 
as  well  as  intense  cold  being  necessary  properly  to 
germinate  and  ripen  the  crops.  Hence  it  follows 
that  the  farmer  and  the  agricultural  laborer  must  be 
men  of  strong  constitutions,  able  to  withstand  the 
great  drain  on  their  vital  forces  that  comes  from 
arduous  labor  under  burning  suns  and  the  isolation 
of  long,  hard  winters.  Boutmy  quotes  Leroy-Beau- 
lieu  to  the  effect  that  the  extreme  severity  of  the 
climate  in  the  Muscovite  plains,  and  the  great  va 
riations  between  the  maximum  and  minimum  tem 
peratures,  enervate  and  depress  man  instead  of 
stimulating  him.  The  effect  of  winter  in  causing 
mental  depression  has  been  well  established  in  the 
United  States.  It  is  a  fact  resting  on  competent  au 
thority  that  when  the  West  was  even  less  sparsely 
settled  than  it  is  to-day  insanity  among  the  women 
living  in  farmhouses  was  not  infrequent;  the  silence, 
the  monotony,  the  absence  of  all  society,  the  never- 
ending  vista  of  the  snow-covered  plains,  deathlike 
in  their  silence,  with  no  moving  creature  or  thing 
to  afford  even  a  momentary  diversion,  unbalanced 


60  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

these  women,  their  physical  vitality  lowered  by  the 
enervating  climate  and  unremitting  toil.  Men  suf 
fered  less,  because,  while  their  lives  were  almost 
equally  monotonous,  they  were  much  in  the  open, 
they  went  to  the  settlements  and  near-by  towns ;  but 
the  women  saw  nothing  but  the  four  walls  of  their 
houses  and  the  interminable  plains  gripped  in  the 
iron  hand  of  winter. 

The  latest  evidence  we  have  of  the  correspond 
ence  between  climatic  severity  and  isolation  and  in 
sanity  is  found  in  the  passage  by  the  United  States 
Senate,  on  February  28,  1908,  of  a  bill  to  increase 
the  appropriation  for  the  care  of  the  insane  in 
Alaska.  In  1905  Congress  passed  a  law  providing 
that  "five  per  cent  of  the  license  moneys  collected 
from  outside  of  the  incorporated  towns  in  the  dis 
trict  of  Alaska"  should  be  devoted  to  the  care  of 
the  insane.  This  sum  proving  insufficient  by  reason 
of  the  increase  of  insanity,  the  law  of  1905  was  re 
pealed  and  the  Secretary  of  the  Interior  was  given 
authority  to  draw  on  the  Treasury  for  whatever 
funds  might  be  necessary  properly  to  care  for  the 
insane  in  Alaska.  And  in  an  American  newspaper  * 
I  find  stated  that  the  Chief  Signal  Officer  of  the 
Army  "has  decided  to  withdraw  from  Alaska  all 
men  of  the  Signal  Corps  who  have  been  there  for 
two  years  or  more."  The  immediate  reason  for  this 
decision,  it  is  explained,  is  the  mental  breakdown  of 
Master  Signal  Electrician  George  Treffinger,  who 

1  The  Washington  Post,  March  8,  1908. 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE          61 

had  been  on  duty  in  Alaska  for  four  years.  "The 
trouble  with  Mr.  Treffinger,"  the  account  says,  "is 
supposed  to  be  due  to  the  rigorous  climate  and  the 
hardships  of  service  in  Alaska.  .  .  .  The  Treffinger 
case  is  not  the  first  in  which  mental  trouble  has  re 
sulted  from  long  service  in  Alaska.  Several  years 
ago  an  officer  of  the  Signal  Corps  returned  home 
broken  down  in  health  and  mentally  impaired. 
While  he  improved  for  a  time,  he  was  finally  placed 
on  the  retired  list.  Other  officers,  coming  home 
from  long  service  in  Alaska,  are  reported  to  have 
exhibited  abnormal  mental  tendencies,  which,  how 
ever,  disappeared  after  remaining  in  a  temperate 
climate  for  a  short  while." 

It  has  often  been  erroneously  asserted  that  the 
fierce  stress  of  modern  competition  and  the  excite 
ment  of  city  life  are  the  inciting  causes  of  insanity, 
but  careful  investigation  will  show  that  isolation  and 
long  and  severe  winters,  to  persons  born  and  reared 
under  other  circumstances,  are  largely  responsible 
for  the  increase  of  mental  disturbance. 

The  physical  characteristics  of  the  United  States 
have  had  their  effect  on  the  American  people 
through  the  influence  of  things  so  much  a  matter 
of  course  as  clothing,  food,  and  the  structure  of 
houses.  The  great  mass  of  Americans  must  be 
warmly  clad  for  more  than  half  of  every  year ;  they 
must  live  in  houses  artificially  heated,  and  they  must 
eat  meat  and  other  foods  rich  in  proteids  to  repair 
bodily  waste.  In  this  they  are  unlike  the  vine- 


62  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

growers  of  Italy  or  the  planters  of  the  West  Indies, 
where  a  small  amount  of  clothing  suffices  and  natu 
ral  heat  supplies  all  the  warmth  necessary  to  keep 
their  houses  at  a  comfortable  temperature,  and  the 
soil  needs  only  lightly  to  be  scratched  to  yield  its 
harvest. 

Nor  must  we  overlook  the  effect  of  heat  on  the 
minds  and  bodies  of  men.  For  nearly  six  months 
in  the  year  the  average  mean  temperature  of  the 
United  States,  with  a  few  isolated  exceptions,  is 
higher  than  that  of  Europe,  and  it  drains  the  phys 
ical  energies  of  Americans,  who  suffer  intensely, 
especially  in  the  large  cities.  It  is  true  that  men  and 
women  go  about  their  allotted  tasks  in  even  the  most 
torrid  days,  but  they  are  made  listless,  nervous, 
irritable,  and  quick-tempered,  and  the  effect  is  not 
merely  transitory,  but  produces  lasting  structural 
and  mental  changes.  Habits  that  have  been  long 
continued  are  not  merely  second  nature,  but  become 
the  very  nature  of  man  himself.  From  the  begin 
ning,  Englishmen  in  America  have  been  forced  to 
adapt  themselves  to  extremes  of  temperature  which 
were  unknown  to  them.  The  overheating  of  all 
American  houses  in  winter,  which  is  the  perpetual 
and  just  complaint  of  every  foreigner,  who  marvels 
how  Americans  live  in  such  a  superheated  atmos 
phere,  is  easily  explained.  From  the  intense  heat  of 
summer  there  is  the  sudden  transition  to  the  fierce 
cold  of  winter,  and  the  shock  is  too  violent.  The 
man  wrorking  in  the  open,  the  farmer,  the  logger,  the 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE          63 

woodsman,  can  stand  the  cold,  although  not  without 
discomfort;  but  the  city  dweller  must  make  artificial 
conditions  simulate  the  natural  heat  of  summer. 
These  thermometric  variations  are  not  conducive 
to  poise  or  equability,  they  invite  rather  to  nervous 
ness  and  excitability;  probably  they  are  not  with 
out  physiological  effects.  They  dry  up  the  secre 
tions,  and  to  keep  the  salivary  glands  moistened  is 
perhaps  the  reason  the  American  indulges  in  such 
copious  libations  of  iced  water;  catarrh,  I  have  been 
told,  is  more  prevalent  in  the  United  States  than 
elsewhere,  which  may  be  the  result  of  excessive  heat 
in  summer  and  the  dry  artificial  heat  of  winter;  the 
unpleasant  habit  of  expectoration  so  freely  indulged 
in,  and  the  fondness  of  Americans  for  tobacco- 
chewing,  which  is  not  confined  as  it  is  in  England 
to  the  lowest  classes,  are  the  mechanical  efforts  of 
Nature  to  afford  relief.  But  once  again  we  see  the 
effect  of  heredity.  The  seed  of  this  new  race  was 
planted  in  the  soil  of  New  England  and  from  there 
sent  forth  its  shoots  to  make  a  continent  blossom; 
the  pioneers  were  the  children  of  men  who  hardened 
under  the  touch  of  long  winters  and  withstood  the 
test  of  summer  heat;  who  inured  themselves  to  their 
surroundings,  and  who  were  able  to  carry  ever  west 
ward  their  civilization  because  they  had  been  tried 
and  survived. 

Two  things  the  settler  quickly  learned  were  indis 
pensable  for  his  salvation  —  heat  for  his  body  and 
his  home,  and  food  containing  the  largest  amount  of 


64  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

strength-giving  properties.  Hence  he  became  at  an 
early  day  a  trapper  and  a  hunter,  for  the  skins  of 
the  fur-bearing  animals  were  necessary  to  clothe  him 
and  the  carcasses  of  some  of  them  to  feed  him;  he 
felled  the  trees  for  fuel,  until  with  greater  knowledge 
he  uncovered  the  stored-up  riches  of  the  earth  and 
found  in  coal  a  better  and  more  economical  source 
for  the  creation  of  heat  and  energy. 

As  powerful  as  human  institutions,  political 
teachings,  or  the  inspiration  of  religion,  has  been  the 
influence  of  Nature  on  American  race  development. 
"The  history  of  the  United  States,  more  than  that 
of  any  Old  World  country,  is  the  record  of  its 
physical  achievements.  The  exploitation  of  virgin 
territory  by  a  race  of  extraordinary  intelligence, 
resource,  and  energy  is  the  essential  theme  of  our 
national  history.  Political  events  and  social  changes 
are  conditioned  on  industrial  evolution,  and  the 
story  of  America  can  be  comprehended  only  in  the 
light  of  her  material  aspirations  and  attainments." l 

In  America,  perhaps  to  a  greater  degree  than  in 
any  other  country  of  which  we  have  intimate  know 
ledge,  the  basic  characteristics  of  the  race  can  be 
traced  to  natural  causes.  This  necessity  to  be 
warmly  clothed  and  warmly  housed  and  well  fed 
made  men  from  the  first  devote  much  time  and 
thought  to  purely  material  conditions,  and  at  the 
same  time  it  developed  to  an  extraordinary  degree 
the  virtue  of  individual  initiative.  To  suffer  from 

1  Coman:  The  Industrial  History  of  the  United  States,  preface,  p.  vii. 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE          65 

the  cold  or  to  defy  its  rigor  depended  not  upon  the 
general  effort  of  the  community  as  it  does  at  the 
present  day  when  every  activity  of  life  is  special 
ized,  but  upon  the  skill,  the  resource,  the  industry 
of  the  individual,  who  must  match  his  cunning 
against  the  cunning  of  his  quarry,  learn  its  habits, 
display  the  same  patience.  And  in  this  the  hunts 
man  differed  in  no  wise  from  the  farmer,  the  woods 
man,  the  early  trader.  The  sense  of  community  was 
strong,  each .  man  felt  himself  a  part  of  the  body 
politic  and  social,  and  yet  each  knew  that  he  must 
rely  on  his  good  right  arm  for  success.  In  countries 
where  life  can  be  sustained  on  a  handful  of  rice  or  a 
small  quantity  of  fruit  that  requires  little  or  no  cul 
tivation  and  clothing  is  a  burden,  Nature  does  not 
call  upon  her  children  to  display  their  resource  or 
their  initiative,  but  in  climates  where  these  things 
are  vital  for  the  preservation  and  development  of 
life  the  inexorable  demand  must  either  be  met  with 
the  proper  intelligence  and  skill  or  the  race  must 
perish.  The  law  of  survival,  especially  in  those 
early  days,  has  been  strikingly  demonstrated.  Those 
unsuited  for  their  new  environment  and  conditions* 
who  were  too  weak,  or  too  lazy,  or  too  ignorant  to 
adapt  themselves  to  their  physical  and  other  sur 
roundings,  died ;  the  strong,  the  industrious,  and  the 
intelligent  survived  and  transmitted  to  their  descend 
ants  their  own  qualities  of  mind  and  body. 

The  English  people  have  been  vastly  influenced 
by  the  physiography   of  their  country,  and  it  is 


66  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

peculiarly  appropriate  that  the  shoot  from  their 
race  that  spread  across  the  sea  and  from  which 
sprung  a  new  race  should  have  had  its  character 
moulded  by  the  same  influences.  It  was  the  custom 
of  the  early  historians  to  attribute  to  certain  influ 
ences,  political,  military,  dynastic,  the  rise  and 
fall  of  nations,  and  to  find  in  them  the  causes  that 
made  or  wrecked  nations ;  and  later  historians,  while 
not  ignoring  what  may  be  termed  primary  historical 
causes,  have  included  commerce  as  one  of  the  ele 
ments  that  go  to  the  making  of  national  character. 
The  methods  of  the  historian  an4  the  political 
psychologist  differ.  The  latter  must  examine  more 
minutely  remote  causes,  for  he  finds  in  them  not 
only  the  motives  of  action,  but  discovers  that  those 
actions  were  the  inexorable  result  of  causes  no  more 
to  be  defied  or  prevented  than  the  movements  of 
the  planets  in  their  preordained  orbits.  No  study 
of  race  development  can  be  complete  unless  proper 
consideration  is  given  to  the  geographic  conditions 
under  which  the  race  was  nurtured. 

"The  effect  of  the  size  of  their  country  can  be 
traced  in  the  ideas  of  the  American  people,  which 
are  marked  by  a  certain  largeness  and  daring.  The 
small  territorial  standards  of  the  early  European 
settlers  have  become  profoundly  modified  by  Ameri 
can  continental  conditions.  The  mere  area  of  the 
individual  states  increases  from  the  east  towards  the 
west.  The  commonwealths  of  New  England  seem 
pigmies  in  size  compared  with  the  trans-Mississippi 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE          67 

states.  There  are  twenty-six  states  in  the  smaller 
half  of  the  country  east  of  the  Mississippi,  and  only 
twenty-three  states  and  territories  west  of  it."1 

The  larger  area  of  the  Western  States  show  how 
"profoundly  modified"  the  American  tempera 
ment  has  become  by  American  conditions.  Begin 
ning  as  an  Englishman,  accustomed  to  think  in 
small  areas,  the  geographical  unit  being  the  com 
pact  English  county,  it  was  natural  for  the  pioneer 
to  carry  his  conception  of  size  with  him  and  to 
begin  his  planting  on  a  diminutive  scale.  The 
scattered  and  independent  settlements  and  colo 
nies,  finally  merged  into  states,  were  still  to  be  held 
within  restricted  areas,  because  the  imagination  of 
man  at  that  time  was  not  vivid  enough  to  grasp 
the  truth,  so  foreign  to  all  past  experience  and  tra 
dition,  that  danger  did  not  necessarily  reside  in 
mere  size,  and  that  a  political  system  was  not  de 
pendent  upon  its  geographic  limits.  It  was  only 
when  the  Englishman  ceased  to  be  an  Englishman 
and  became  an  American  under  the  influence  of 
American  conditions  that  he  cast  off  his  insularity 
and  became  continental;  it  was  then  he  quickly 
adapted  himself  to  the  wide  range  and  vision  that 
the  size  of  the  continent  inspired,  and  size  no  longer 
had  terrors  for  him.  The  men  who  went  from 
New  England  to  settle  the  West  took  on  the  large 
ness  of  the  domain  over  which  they  ruled.  To  this 
day  the  less  confined,  broader  view  of  the  Westerner 

1  Semple:  American  History  and  Us  Geographic  Conditions,  p.  242. 


68  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

is  contrasted  with  the  more  rigid  conception  of  life 
of  the  descendants  of  the  Pilgrims  and  the  Puritans. 
Between  the  men  of  the  East  and  those  of  the  West 
there  is  a  difference,  the  difference  that  always 
distinguishes  an  older  and  a  newer  civilization; 
that  is  marked  when  the  older  civilization  develops 
under  the  stimulus  of  man  touching  elbows  with 
his  fellow  man  and  the  majesty  of  Nature  is  less 
fearful;  and  the  newer,  when  men  are  isolated  and 
"range  after  range  of  mountains,  and  mile  after 
mile  of  rugged  plateau  separate  them  from  the 
seats  of  civilization  and  government." 

To  sum  up  and  to  bear  in  mind  the  physiographic 
conditions  of  the  United  States  as  affecting  a  people 
native  to  the  soil  or  quickly  brought  in  harmony 
with  it  by  the  force  of  circumstances,  these  are  the 
principal  things  to  be  noticed :  The  climate  is  gen 
erally  drier,  the  alternating  seasons  both  cooler  and 
hotter  than  those  of  northern  Europe;  because  of 
the  relatively  unclouded  sky  there  is  more  sunlight.1 
There  is  a  greater  quantity  of  ozone  in  the  northern 
latitudes,  and  therefore  it  is  more  stimulating  and 
produces  a  kinetic  energy  and  vitality  that  finds 
its  expression  in  constant  activity  and  restlessness, 
both  mental  and  physical. 

This  was  quickly  recognized  by  the  first  settlers. 
"Experience  doth  manifest,"  one  of  their  chroni 
clers  writes,  "that  there  is  hardly  a  more  healthful 
place  to  be  found  in  the  world  that  agreeth  better 

1  Shaler:  Nature  and  Man  in  America,  p.  264. 


AMALGAMATION    OF   RACE          69 

with  our  English  bodies.  Many  that  have  been 
weak  and  sickly  in  Old  England,  by  coming  hither 
have  been  thoroughly  healed,  and  grown  healthful 
and  strong.  For  here  is  an  extraordinary  clear  and 
dry  air,  that  is  of  most  healing  nature  to  all  such  as 
are  of  a  cold,  melancholy,  phlegmatic,  rheumatic 
temper  of  body."  And  he  ends  his  glowing  tribute 
to  the  life-giving  properties  of  New  England  air 
with  this  happy  epigram :  "  I  think  it  is  a  wise  course 
for  all  cold  complexions  to  come  to  take  physic  in 
New  England;  for  a  sup  of  New  England's  air  is 
better  than  a  whole  draught  of  Old  England's 
ale."1 

The  "keen,  alert  mind"  and  the  "incessant, 
unremitting  energy"  of  the  present-day  American 
are  ascribed  by  an  American  writer  to  climatic 
influences,  and  he  finds  in  the  so-called  "cold 
wave,"  or  sudden  drop  of  temperature  accompany 
ing  a  downrush  of  cool  air,  something  that  clearly 
differentiates  American  from  European  weather. 
This  is  the  theory  of  Gilbert  H.  Grosvenor,2  and  it 
is  this  cold  wave,  he  believes,  that  stirs  up  the 
sluggish  immigrant  and  fires  his  ambition.  "We 
Americans,"  he  says,  "are  always  talking  about 
our  mountains  of  gold  and  coal  and  iron,  of  our 
fat  fields  of  corn  and  wheat,  but  few  of  us  ever 
realize  that  we  have  in  our  climate  a  great  advant 
age  over  all  other  nations.  In  the  cold  wave,  which 

1  Young's  Chronicles  of  Massachusetts,  pp.  251-252. 
3  The  Century  Magazine,  June,  1905. 


70  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

in  summer  and  winter  so  often  sweeps  across  the 
land  and  sends  the  thermometer  tumbling  thirty 
degrees  in  almost  as  many  minutes,  we  have  a  con 
stant,  a  never  diminishing  asset  of  priceless  value. 
The  wave  acts  as  a  tonic,  but,  unlike  any  tonic 
made  by  man,  it  carries  no  reaction.  No  other  land 
has  cold  waves  like  ours.  To  the  cold  dry  air  of 
this  periodic  cold  wave,  which  brings  extraordinary 
changes  of  temperature,  we  owe  much  of  the  keen, 
alert  mind,  the  incessant,  unremitting  energy  of 
our  American  race.  .  .  . 

"The  cold  wave  is  born  in  the  heavens  miles 
above  our  heads,  usually  over  the  Rocky  Moun 
tains  plateau.  Suddenly  a  mass  of  bitterly  cold  air 
will  tumble  down  upon  Montana.  It  rushes  down 
as  though  poured  through  an  enormous  funnel. 
As  it  falls  it  gains  momentum,  and,  reaching  the 
earth,  spreads  over  the  Mississippi  Valley  and  then 
over  the  Atlantic  States,  covering  them  like  a 
blanket.  It  scatters  the  foul,  logy,  breath-soaked 
atmosphere  in  our  towns  and  cities,  and  puts  ginger 
into  the  air.  We  fill  our  lungs  with  it  and  live. 
New  waves  are  always  coming,  following  each 
other  in  regular  procession  like  the  waves  on  a 
seashore." 

On  the  Atlantic  and  Pacific  coasts  there  are 
numerous  good  harbors;  on  the  Southern  coast 
from  Hatteras  around  Florida  to  Mexico,  there  are 
fewer  ports.  "Despite  the  imperfection  of  the 
harbors  from  Hatteras  southward,  the  coast  of 


AMALGAMATION   OF   RACE         71 

North  America  is,  on  the  whole,  the  most  com 
pletely  maritime  of  any  continent  except  Europe. 
Its  landlocked  waters,  including  the  Great  Lakes, 
are  of  vast  extent;  the  total  number  of  excellent 
ports  possibly  exceeds  that  of  the  Old  World." * 
Rainfall,  except  in  the  arid  and  subarid  regions  of 
the  West  and  Southwest,  is  generally  distributed, 
and  the  average  precipitation  is  of  sufficient  vol 
ume  to  nourish  the  soil  and  produce  abundant 
crops.  The  great  climatal  variations  make  it  pos 
sible  for  all  cereals  and  fruits  found  in  the  temper 
ate  zone  to  be  grown,  and  in  those  regions  where 
the  temperature  is  subtropical  the  products  of  the 
soil  show  their  exotic  origin.  Vast  plains  are  the 
breeding-grounds  of  the  animals  that  man  needs 
for  food  and  his  convenience;  forests  and  fields  are 
the  habitation  of  birds  and  game ;  the  waters,  both 
coastal  and  inland,  teem  with  many  varieties  of 
edible  fish;  mineral  wealth  is  inexhaustible.  These 
things  —  the  size  of  the  continent,  the  climate,  the 
rainfall,  the  abundance  of  food  —  are  the  elements 
that  go  to  make  a  race  what  it  is  and  produce 
their  clearly  defined  psychological  characteristics. 

1  Shaler,  op.  cit.,  p.  217. 


CHAPTER  V 

THE   OLD   IN   THE   NEW    ENVIRONMENT 

THERE  came  in  the  first  place  to  America  English 
men  from  a  small,  compact  country  to  whom  the 
extremes  of  heat  or  cold  were  unknown,  who  had 
been  accustomed  to  an  almost  stable  climate,  so 
that  it  justified  the  saying  of  Charles  II  that  it  "in 
vited  men  abroad  more  days  in  the  year  and  more 
hours  in  the  day  than  another  country."  Its  soil 
was  fertile  and  yielded  its  reward  to  effort  intelli 
gently  directed,  and  yet  not  so  luxuriant  that  it  did 
not  demand  persistent  industry.  Remote  as  the 
villages  of  Nottinghamshire  and  Lincolnshire  and 
Yorkshire  were  from  London  in  those  days,  they 
were  still  not  isolated  from  the  capital,  and  their 
people  enjoyed  that  sense  of  security  that  comes 
from  contact  with  the  great  world.  England  in  the 
beginning  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  a  land  of 
cities  and  towns  and  villages,  whose  people  tilled 
their  farms  and  went  about  their  ordained  tasks  in 
an  orderly  manner  and  whose  civilization  and  con 
ventions  had  come  to  them  as  a  natural  growth. 

The  Englishmen  in  America  faced  an  unbroken 
wilderness,  stern,  harsh,  forbidding.  Of  the  im 
mensity  of  the  country  they  knew  nothing,  and  not 
being  gifted  with  the  vivid  imagination  of  the 


ENVIRONMENT  73 

Southerner  they  dreamed  still  less.  What  they  con 
fronted  was  Nature  in  her  most  savage  mood. 

"In  similar  circumstances  Popham's  settlers  had 
despaired  and  fled ;  but  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  were 
strong  in  religious  faith,  and  in  the  sense  of  a  divine 
mission."  These  Englishmen,  as  Fiske  tells  us,  had 
heard  of  warm  countries  like  Italy  and  cold  coun 
tries  like  Russia ;  harsh  experience  soon  taught  them 
that  there  are  climates  in  which  the  summer  of 
Naples  may  alternate  with  the  winter  of  Moscow. 
As  if  to  forbid  them  entrance  the  water  froze  when 
the  Pilgrims  landed;  consumption  soon  reaped  its 
rich  harvest.  These  intrepid  adventurers  learned 
then  that  truth  which  not  until  nearly  three  centu 
ries  later  did  science  establish — that  between  Nature 
and  man  wages  a  never-ending  war,  and  only  man 
fit  to  survive  lives.  There  at  the  very  beginning  the 
choice  was  forced  upon  them  either  to  subdue  Na 
ture  and  make  of  her  their  slave  or  surrender  to  her. 
They  conquered,  but  the  far-reaching  consequences 
of  that  struggle  between  man  and  Nature  we  are 
only  now  beginning  to  appreciate. 

These  Englishmen,  these  pioneers  of  their  race, 
must  subjugate  Nature,  who  assumed  a  form  hith 
erto  unknown  to  them,  and  whose  moods  were  so 
varied.  It  was  from  the  beginning  a  savage,  brutal, 
unrelenting  fight;  and  it  would  result  in  making  men 
morose,  taciturn,  harsh,  weighed  down  by  the  im 
mensity  of  the  struggle,  despairing,  hopeless  almost 
of  overcoming  their  gigantic  adversary;  or  it  would 


74  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

make  them  self-reliant,  determined  to  the  verge  of 
obstinacy,  full  of  hope,  supremely  confident  in  their 
ultimate  success.  If  the  weight  of  Nature  did  not 
press  upon  them  and  crush  them  and  deaden  all 
power  of  imagination, —  and  imagination  is  only 
another  name  for  hope,  —  then  it  would  make  them 
take  everything  in  the  spirit  of  a  rude  jest,  a  Gar 
gantuan  practical  joke,  that  was  not  enjoyed, 
but  pride  forbade  that  they  should  wince.  And 
that  was  their  attitude.  They  jested  with  Nature, 
they  gave  back  to  her  what  she  gave  to  them, 
and  it  made  them  rough,  boisterous,  fond  of  horse 
play  and  the  commonplace,  and  yet  —  could  it  be 
otherwise?  —  it  produced  a  certain  gravity  and 
melancholy.  This  has  left  its  ineradicable  impress 
on  national  character.  We  have  to-day  the  Ameri 
can  love  of  fun,  which  must  be  obvious  and  broad 
without  being  coarse.  Dainty  humor,  that  lightness 
and  delicacy  of  touch  for  which  the  French  are 
famous,  does  not  appeal  to  them;  and  of  wit,  as 
distinguished  from  humor,  there  is  almost  no  na 
tional  appreciation.  The  screaming  farce  rather 
than  the  gossamer  comedy,  whose  words  are  as 
elusive  almost  as  the  intangible  essence  of  the  per 
fume  of  the  forest,  is  their  measure  of  enjoyment. 
It  has  come  to  be  believed  that  the  Americans 
have  a  livelier  sense  of  the  ridiculous  than  any  other 
people,  but  this  is  one  of  those  cases  of  endowing 
a  race  with  mythical  qualities.  Exaggeration,  rough 
caricature,  they  understand,  but  they  have  no  nice 


ENVIRONMENT  75 

perception  of  proportion  or  perspective,  and  with 
out  that  a  fine  discernment  of  the  absurd  is  im 
possible;  it, is  their  extravagance  of  emotion  that 
makes  them  so  prone  to  the  use  of  the  superlative. 
At  one  time  I  believed  that  this  national  weakness 
for  the  superlative  was  simply  blague,  but  I  now 
know  that  it  is  constitutional.  As  deficient  in  the 
power  to  estimate  true  values  as  certain  persons 
are  wanting  in  the  ability  to  differentiate  colors  or 
recognize  harmony,  their  reflection  of  life  is  one  of 
those  convex  mirrors  so  mirth-provoking  to  the 
yokel,  who  sees  his  features  enormously  distorted 
and  grins  back  in  delight  at  the  exaggerated  like 
ness.  It  is  this  constitutional  tendency  for  exagger 
ation  and  the  inability  to  measure  men  and  things 
for  what  they  really  are  that  is  responsible  for  the 
American  belief,  which  is  the  cardinal  doctrine  of 
their  faith,  in  the  sw^anlike  attribute  of  American 
geese,  in  the  "bigness"  of  their  country  and  the 
extraordinary  ability  of  their  men;  in  this  respect 
similar  to  little  children  who,  having  mastered  the 
elementary  multiplication  table,  talk  of  millions 
and  think,  to  their  limited  capacity,  in  billions. 
There  is  seldom  a  man  elected  to  an  office  (immedi 
ately  after  his  election),  whether  it  be  constable  or 
President,  who  is  not  either  in  intellect  or  virtue 
without  a  peer,  whose  genius  is  not  the  admiration 
of  all  the  world ;  without  discriminating  whether  his 
place  was  the  gift  of  a  boss  or  the  recognition  of 
real  merit.  If  the  Americans  had  a  keener  appre- 


76  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ciation  of  the  ridiculous,  their  newspapers  would 
be  less  amusing,  but  they  would  also  be  more 
informing.  No  newspaper,  for  instance,  with  a 
sense  of  proportion  would  attempt  seriously  to 
defend  its  cartoonist  by  bracketing  in  the  same 
sentence  the  name  of  a  quite  unknown  and  crude 
amateur  and  Raphael,  Michael  Angelo,  and  Phid 
ias!1  Yet  the  incongruity  and  absurdity  of  the 
juxtaposition  does  not  make  the  paper  the  laughing 
stock  of  the  country.  But  it  is  a  dangerous  pastime 
for  the  inmates  of  glass  houses  to  throw  stones,  and 
as  hardly  any  newspaper  excludes  the  superlative 
from  its  vocabulary  there  is  reason  why  criticism 
is  hushed. 

In  a  democracy  man  is  much  given  to  the  con 
templation  of  himself,  and  there  is  tendency  to 
exalt  the  individual  and  minimize  the  force  of 
organized  society.  Where  classes  exist  the  person 
is  of  less  consequence  than  the  class  he  represents, 
the  order  whose  champion  he  is,  the  traditions  he 
defends.  What  gives  weight  to  the  utterance  of  the 
possessor  of  a  historical  name  in  a  monarchy  is  not 
alone  his  talents  or  his  virtues,  but  the  feeling  that 
through  him  speaks  the  historic  past,  that  he  voices 
not  merely  his  own  opinion  but  that  of  his  class. 
Democracy  undoubtedly  is  a  spur  to  individual 
initiative,  but  man  becomes  so  proud  of  what  he  has 
accomplished  that  he  is  apt  to  forget  the  obligation 
he  owes  the  state. 

1  San  Francisco  Examiner,  July,  1908. 


ENVIRONMENT  77 

It  was  an  acute  English  observer  who  was  over- 
impressed  by  the  seeming  gravity  and  melancholy 
of  the  Americans.  He  observed  them  at  work,  on 
the  streets,  in  traveling,  at  play,  and  it  was  his  con 
clusion  that  they  were  a  sombre  race.  Compared 
with  the  volatile  Latin  untempered  by  the  restrain 
ing  influence  of  the  Saxon  strain,  or  the  mercurial 
Celt,  or  even  the  phlegmatic  Teuton,  whose  phlegm 
is  partly  the  conventional  habit  of  controlling  emo 
tions,  the  American  appears  markedly  more  quiet 
and  as  if  weighed  down  by  the  burden  of  life,  and 
yet  distinguished  by  alertness  that  sets  him  apart. 
Had  the  original  English  stock  spread  across  the 
continent  undiluted  by  the  blood  of  Europe,  we 
should  to-day  have  in  the  United  States  not  a  new 
race  but  simply  a  variation  of  the  parent  stem.  It 
is  this  foreign  element  absorbed  into  the  native 
stock  (meaning  by  this  not  the  indigenous  race,  the 
Indians,  but  the  English,  who  in  the  second  genera 
tion  became  native  to  the  soil)  that  has  been  one 
of  the  causes  to  produce  the  new  race,  and  that,  in 
addition  to  the  influence  of  environment  and  a 
political  code  that  is  not  less  a  moral  and  social  law? 
explains  the  many  contradictions  in  the  American 
character.  The  gravity,  the  melancholy,  that  feeling 
of  national  despair  that  finds  its  expression  in  the 
savage  attacks  of  the  press  on  the  motives  and 
integrity  of  public  men,  which  is  almost  the  ago 
nized  cry  whether  anything  is  worth  while,  is  the 
spirit  of  the  Puritan,  which  for  three  centuries  has 


78  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

quickened  the  conscience  of  America  and  still 
lives.  And  the  cynical  indifference  so  often  dis 
played,  the  levity  with  which  things  spiritual  are 
treated,  the  sudden  flaming  emotion  frequently  akin 
to  hysteria,  the  balance  and  sound  judgment  after 
the  first  gust  of  passion  has  spent  itself,  the  feverish 
haste  and  the  dogged  persistence,  the  selfishness 
and  the  altruism,  the  suspicion  and  the  almost 
childlike  confidence,  the  self-consciousness  and  the 
poise,  —  these  are  the  product  of  environment,  of 
blood,  and  political  and  social  institutions. 

It  is  only  the  superficial  observer  who  can  dog 
matically  assert  what  the  American  temperament  is. 
It  is  as  true  to  say  that  the  American  is  grave  as  it  is 
to  say  that  he  is  volatile;  as  true  as  it  would  be  to 
say  that  America  has  mountains  and  plains ;  as  mis 
leading  as  it  would  be  to  say  that  its  striking  phys 
ical  characteristics  are  mountains  and  to  ignore  the 
fact  of  its  plains  or  rivers ;  as  to  say  that  the  soil  is 
influenced  by  the  heat  and  to  disregard  the  fructi 
fying  effect  of  cold.  The  American  volubly  strikes 
up  a  chance  acquaintance  with  a  man  he  may 
happen  to  meet  in  a  railway  carriage,  while  the 
Englishman  retains  his  reserve  and  is  oblivious  of 
his  fellow  passengers,  and  the  Englishman  insists 
that  the  American  is  obtrusive  and  has  no  concep 
tion  of  dignity  or  reticence,  forgetting  that  a  social 
and  political  system  that  recognizes  caste  has  a 
manner  of  expression  entirely  different  from  that  in 
which  labor  may  occupy  the  throne;  that,  as  was 


ENVIRONMENT  79 

said  of  the  Florentines,  the  consciousness  of  having 
not  simply  the  right  to  vote  but  the  chance  of  being 
voted  for  must  make  every  man  feel  within  himself 
the  power  of  sovereignty.  A  people  cannot  be  de 
liberately  guilty  of  national  hypocrisy  and  not  de 
generate.  The  American  must  either  believe  in  his 
articles  of  faith  —  the  universal  equality  of  man  - 
or  else  go  to  destruction;  for  faith,  a  profound 
conviction,  a  belief  in  something,  whether  in  the 
divine  right  of  kings  or  the  majesty  of  the  will  of 
the  people,  is  necessary  to  hold  society  together. 
"  Hypatia  had  taken  aw^ay  the  living  God  and  given 
him  instead  the  four  elements."  It  does  not  com 
pensate,  for  the  elements  are  unstable  and  society 
must  anchor  itself  to  a  rock.  The  American  no 
more  than  the  Englishman  is  a  conscious  national 
hypocrite.  Each  recites  his  creed  and  believes  it, 
but  in  this  as  in  other  things  a  definition  of  terms  is 
necessary. 

The  struggle  in  which  the  founders  of  a  new  race 
engaged  developed  them  physically  and  materially, 
but  it  dwarfed  them  spiritually.  I  do  not  use  this 
word  in  the  sense  it  is  commonly  employed.  It  con 
notes  neither  religion  nor  the  spirit  of  religion,  al 
though  the  deep-seated  devotion  to  religion,  which 
was  the  essence  of  the  Puritan  character,  was  later 
bruised  by  the  struggle.  By  spiritual  I  mean  what 
Carlyle  terms  "our  thinking."  "In  our  inward,  as 
in  our  outward  world,  what  is  mechanical  lies  open 
to  us;  not  what  is  dynamical  and  has  vitality.  Of 


80  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

our  Thinking,  we  might  say,  it  is  the  mere  upper 
surface  that  we  shape  into  articulate  though ts;- 
underneath  the  region  of  argument  and  conscious 
discourse,  lies  the  region  of  meditation;  here,  in  its 
quiet  mysterious  depth,  dwells  what  vital  force  is  in 
us;  here,  if  ought  is  to  be  created  and  not  merely 
manufactured  and  communicated,  must  the  work  go 
on.  Manufacture  is  intelligible,  but  trivial;  Crea 
tion  is  great,  and  cannot  be  understood." 1 

This  vital  force  lying  in  its  quiet  mysterious 
depths,  latent  but  to  be  quickened  into  life  by  the 
spark  of  genius,  remained  inarticulate.  "  Why  did 
poetry  appear  so  brightly  after  the  battle  of  Ther 
mopylae  and  Salamis,  and  quite  turn  away  her  face 
and  wings  from  those  of  Lexington  and  Bunker's 
Hill  ?"  Carlyle  asks,  and  inadequately  answers,"  The 
Greeks  were  a  poetical  people,  the  Americans  are 
not;  that  is  to  say,  it  appeared  because  it  did 
appear!"2  It  would  have  been  more  scientific  and 
more  in  consonance  with  the  truth  of  race  develop 
ment  had  Carlyle  explained  that  the  Greek,  living 
under  soft  skies  and  in  the  midst  of  color,  which  was 
a  background  to  his  domestic  life,  in  whom  the 
sense  of  the  aesthetic  had  been  highly  cultivated, 
was  stimulated  to  write  poetry ;  he  felt  the  imperious 
demand  of  his  nature,  and  knew  that  he  could  com 
mand  his  audience ;  while  the  American,  pioneering 
into  the  unbroken  wilderness,  wresting  from  the 

1  Carlyle:  Critical  and  Miscellaneous  Essays,  vol.  xiv,  p.  347. 

2  Carlyle:  op.  cit.,  p.  255. 


ENVIRONMENT  81 

soil  his  precarious  existence,  awed  by  the  immensity 
and  savagery  of  creation,  felt  his  own  insignificance. 
And  all  wares,  even  intellectual  wares,  are  produced 
in  the  hope  of  finding  a  market.  After  Thermopy 
lae  and  Salamis  there  was  an  audience  and  a  market 
for  poetry  and  there  was  a  profit  or  money  in  pro 
ducing  it;  but  those  embattled  farmers  who  were 
called  from  the  plow  to  the  battlefield,  and  from 
the  battlefield  returned  to  the  plow,  whose  shot 
fired  at  Lexington  was  heard  round  the  world,  had 
no  time  to  write  or  think  poetry.  There  were 
sterner  things  to  do,  and  they  were  done.  Had 
these  people,  as  Campbell  says  of  the  Dutch,  also 
produced  a  Homer,  a  Dante,  or  a  Shakespeare,  they 
would  have  been  a  miracle  and  not  a  growth;  and 
the  American  people,  we  cannot  too  often  repeat, 
are  not  a  miracle  but  a  natural  growth. 

It  is  a  well-established  fact  that  the  more  primi 
tive  a  people  the  higher  the  birth  rate,  and  New 
England  demonstrated  the  truth  of  this  law. 
Men  and  women  married  early  and  bred  fast.  Of 
Mrs.  Sarah  Thayer,  who  died  in  1751,  a  local  bard 
recorded : — 

*  *  Also  she  was  a  fruitful  vine. 

The  truth  I  may  relate,  — 

Fourteen  was  of  her  body  born 

And  lived  to  man's  estate. 

*  *  From  these  did  spring  a  numerous  race 

One  hundred  thirty- two; 
Sixty  and  six  each  sex  alike, 
As  I  declare  to  you. 


82  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

' '  And  one  thing  more  remarkable, 

Which  here  I  shall  record: 
She  'd  fourteen  children  with  her 
At  the  table  of  our  Lord."  l 

But  before  Mrs.  Thayer's  time,  in  the  previous 
century,  although  the  birth  rate  was  very  high,  the 
mortality,  especially  among  children,  was  equally 
great,  and  the  population  was  at  once  abundantly 
replenished  and  ruthlessly  weeded.  "Like  a  tribe  of 
savage  men  or  wild  beasts,  it  was  exposed  to  a  pitiless 
process  of  selection.  Such  a  process  must  conduce  to 
the  physical  vigor  of  a  race ;  it  would  develop  those 
qualities  which  accompany  physical  vigor  and  de 
pend  on  it.  But  there  are  other  qualities  to  which  it 
would  prove  fatal.  That  the  spirit  of  a  Shelley  could 
ever  have  shaped  itself  in  the  life  of  New  England 
was  impossible.  But  the  impossibility  dated  from 
a  stage  earlier  than  that  of  training  and  culture. 
The  birth  of  a  possible  Shelley  in  a  Puritan  house 
hold  would  have  been  a  striking  instance  of  what 
physiologists  call  atavism.  But  even  if  the  portent 
had  occurred,  we  may  be  pretty  sure  that  'died  in 
infancy '  would  have  been  the  only  record  of  it  in 
the  family  register.  Physical  selection  was  part  of 
the  process  which  was  forcing  the  character  of  the 
American  Puritan  into  a  narrow  and  rigid  mould."  2 

Wordsworth  could  sing  of  Nature  and  thrill  to 
the  carol  of  feathered  songsters  where  all  around 
him  was  orderly  cultivation  and  birds  nested  in 

1  Adams:  Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History,  vol.  ii,  p.  610. 
3  Doyle:  English  Colonies  in  America,  vol.  iii,  p.  7. 


ENVIRONMENT  83 

the  eaves  of  barns,  and  church  steeples  softened 
into  the  beauties  of  graceful  age  by  time.  The 
pioneer  —  and  the  whole  people  were  pioneers  — 
saw  in  the  sunrise  only  the  call  to  another  day's 
toil;  there  was  to  him  no  music  in  the  joyous  note 
of  the  birds;  it  was  simply  a  warning  to  protect  his 
crops  from  their  ravages  and  to  mark  the  chang 
ing  seasons.  He  looked  on  neither  eaves  nor 
steeples. 

' '  I  have  been  thinking  all  day,"  said  gently  the  Puritan  maiden, 
'  *  Dreaming  all  night,  and  thinking  all  day,  of  the  hedge-rows  of 

England,  — 

They  are  in  blossom  now,  and  the  country  is  all  like  a  garden; 
Thinking  of  lanes  and  fields,  and  the  song  of  the  lark  and  the 

linnet, 

Seeing  the  village  street,  and  familiar  faces  of  neighbors.  .  .  . 
You  will  say  it  is  wrong,  but  I  cannot  help  it;  I  almost 
Wish  myself  back  in  Old  England,  I  feel  so  lonely  and  wretched."  * 

From  Nature  savage  and  spiteful  as  he  knew  it 
the  pioneer  turned  to  Nature  idealized  as  the  litera 
ture  of  his  youth  pictured  it  and  found  there  his 
solace,  regretting  what  he  had  lost,  perhaps,  but 
animated  by  that  spirit  of  hope  and  determination 
that  had  sent  him  forth  fearlessly  to  find  liberty; 
resolute,  courageous,  unafraid,  but  with  no  desire 
to  sing  the  praises  of  the  Great  Mother,  stern, 
forbidding,  revengeful. 

1  Longfellow:  The  Courtship  of  Miles  Siandish. 


CHAPTER  VI 

NEW  ENGLAND  THE  CRADLE  OF  RACE 

THE  history  of  the  United  States  has  been  a  defi 
ance  of  precedent  and  the  blazing  of  a  new  path  in 
the  trackless  wilds  of  social  progress.  The  impulse 
that  led  to  the  English  colonization  of  America 
was  different  from  that  which  had  controlled  other 
nations  in  their  attempts  to  found  colonies.  "The 
dawn  of  the  seventeenth  century  rose  on  a  some 
what  changed  England.  Englishmen  filled  with  the 
new  wine  of  the  Renaissance  and  united  under  a 
queen  whose  rule,  despite  all  its  craft  and  mean 
ness,  appealed  intensely  to  their  imagination,  had 
dreamt  dreams  and  seen  visions.  A  generation  suc 
ceeded,  not  less  enterprising,  but  more  patient,  more 
self-denying,  more  sane.  The  conception  of  colo 
nies  as  centres  from  which  Christianity  might  be 
spread  through  savage  lands  did  not  altogether  dis 
appear,  nor  did  English  emigrants  at  once  give  up 
the  idea  of  rivaling  Spain  in  the  race  for  gold.  But 
these  ideas  fell  into  the  background.  Colonization 
designed  to  provide  home  for  surplus  population, 
to  expand  alike  the  imports  and  exports  of  Eng 
land,  and  thereby  to  develop  her  naval  resources, 
now  became  the  dominant  motive." 

1  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  vii,  p.  4 


THE   CRADLE   OF  RACE  85 

Remembering  this,  bearing  clearly  in  mind  the 
dominating  motive  that  led  to  the  English  migration 
to  America  in  the  seventeenth  century,  we  shall  be 
able  to  understand  why  it  was  inevitable  that  these 
pioneers  of  a  new  race  should  absorb  the  charac 
teristics  of  their  soil  and  the  land  which  it  was  their 
mission  to  subjugate.  Whether  they  were  divinely 
inspired,  as  some  writers  would  have  us  believe, 
whether  it  was  merely  one  of  those  accidents  with 
which  the  pages  of  history  are  crowded  that  brought 
the  storm-tossed  Mayflower  to  her  haven  in  Cape 
Cod  Bay  instead  of  finding  refuge  in  the  Delaware 
as  had  been  planned,  is  of  all  things  the  least  mate 
rial.  What  is  vital  to  grasp  is  that  this  little  band 
came  to  America  as  "adventurers,"  as  the  word  was 
then  used,  which  corresponds  to  the  sense  in  which 
we  use  the  word  "exploiters"  now;  not  as  "pro 
moters,"  not  as  mere  transients,  but  as  settlers. 
England,  France,  Spain  had  hitherto  sent  their  sons 
to  cross  the  sea  with  a  twofold  purpose  in  view: 
God  was  to  be  glorified  and  the  might  of  the  nation 
magnified  by  the  cross  of  Christ  upraised  before 
savages,  who  incidentally  were  to  be  spoiled  of  their 
gold.  Nothing  is  more  delightful  than  the  delicious 
naivete  of  the  early  chroniclers,  who  in  their  uncon 
scious  simplicity  give  themselves  away  at  every 
opportunity  and  are  as  obvious  as  children. 

"Then  we  demand  farther  what  was  the  cause 
of  his  being  in  this  place  [Dominica],  and  how 
he  came  thither;  he  answered,  That  the  King  of 


86  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Spain  did  every  yeere,  send  out  of  every  great 
monastery  certaine  Friars  into  the  remote  parts  of 
the  Indies,  both  to  seeke  to  convert  the  Savages, 
as  also  to  seeke  out  what  benefits  or  commodities 
might  be  had  in  those  parts." 1 

But  neither  England,  nor  France,  nor  Spain 
understood  the  philosophy  of  colonization  as  colo 
nization,  beginning  with  the  settlement  of  America, 
has  expanded  to  the  present  day.  Colonies  sepa 
rated  from  the  mother  country  by  oceans,  where 
the  power  of  government  quickly  went  into  the 
hands  of  the  people  instead  of  being  autocratically 
retained  by  civil  or  military  governors,  where  from 
the  beginning  the  spirit  of  self-government,  and  self- 
reliance,  and  independence  was  the  spirit  of  insti 
tutions,  —  this  conception  of  colonization,  I  repeat, 
was  unknown  to  political  philosophy  until  the  set 
tlement  of  the  New  World  by  Englishmen. 

In  tracing  the  different  methods  by  which  nations 
have  been  made,  Fiske  contrasts  the  Roman  and 
the  English.  The  former,  he  says,  may  be  briefly 
described  "as  conquest  with  incorporation,  but  with 
out  representation/'  the  latter  differing  "in  a  fea 
ture  of  most  profound  significance;  it  contains  the 
principle  of  representation." 2  Mr.  Fiske  with  his 
lucid  insight  has  explained  one  of  the  reasons  why 
England  succeeded  where  Rome  failed,  but  I  am  in 
clined  to  believe  that  even  more  important  than  the 

1  Chatton's  Voyage,  1606. 

3  Fiske:  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  12  et  seq. 


THE   CRADLE   OF  RACE  87 

principle  of  representation  —  great  as  that  principle 
is,  and  I  would  by  no  means  be  understood  as  hold 
ing  it  lightly  or  detracting  from  its  true  value  in  colo 
nization  —  is  the  spirit  of  the  Englishman,  whether 
inborn  or  acquired  no  one  can  say,  that  leads  him  as 
a  colonizer  to  look  upon  his  migration  not  merely  as 
a  temporary  sojourn,  but  as  the  beginning  of  a  new 
life  and  the  founding  of  a  home  in  a  new  land  that 
henceforth  is  to  be  his  land.  One  reason  offered  for 
the  failure  of  the  French  as  colonizers  in  our  day  is 
the  intense  sentimental  longing  of  the  Frenchman 
for  his  own  country,  which  is  so  much  a  part  of  him 
self  that  he  cannot  be  content  anywhere  else.1  The 
English  may  be  less  sentimental  than  the  French 
-  there  is  no  scientific  instrument  yet  devised  for 
the  measurement  of  emotions  —  or  more  easily 
adaptable  to  new  environment;  whatever  the  rea 
son,  the  colonizer  in  the  early  days  went  forth  with 
the  firm  purpose  to  bide  in  the  land  of  his  promise, 
as  his  descendant  of  to-day,  the  emigrant,  turns  his 
back  on  the  land  of  his  birth  to  find  a  new  home 
across  the  seas.  To  employ  a  modern  simile,  colo 
nizers  before  that  historic  departure  from  Plymouth 
in  1620  were  always  careful  to  provide  themselves 
with  return  tickets,  while  beginning  with  that  day 
men  concerned  themselves  only  with  the  means  of 
reaching  their  destination  and  gave  no  thought  of 
how  they  were  to  come  back. 

1  "A  Briton,  while  he  has  an  abstract  reverence  for  the  island  of  his 
origin,  has  rarely  the  clinging  attachment  to  its  soil  which  a  Frenchman  has 
to  the  land  of  France."  — Bodley:  France,  vol.  i,  p.  233. 


88  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

We  are  impressed  by  another  extraordinary  cir 
cumstance  in  connection  with  this  establishment  of 
the  first  colony  founded  under  the  new  philosophy. 
Hitherto  England  and  France  and  Spain  had  sent 
out  expeditions  whose  members  were  either  soldiers 
or  priests,  frankly  for  conquest;  and  the  sword  and 
the  cross  were  so  frequently  found  on  the  same  hilt 
that  it  was  not  always  easy  to  determine  whether  its 
owner  was  habited  in  coat  of  mail  or  cassock.  The 
passengers  of  the  Mayflower  were  drawn  from  a 
different  class  of  society.  They  were  neither  sol 
diers,  buccaneers,  freebooters,  licensed  pirates,  nor 
priests.  On  the  roll  we  find  the  name  of  only  one 
man  who  had  made  arms  his  profession,  that 
doughty  old  captain,  Miles  Standish,  whose  mili 
tary  knowledge  served  the  colonists  in  good  stead 
when  they  fought  for  their  existence  against  the 
Indians;  but  who  is  better  known  to  fame  as  the 
romantic  hero  of  a  mythical  incident  that  Long 
fellow  created  and  the  world  generally  has  accepted 
as  history.  Of  priests  there  wrere  none.  To  minis 
ter  to  their  spiritual  welfare  they  had  only  one  "lay 
reader." 

They  were  neither  soldiers  nor  priests,  these 
founders  of  a  race ;  what,  then,  were  they  ?  They 
can  best  be  described,  in  terms  that  are  easily  intel 
ligible  to-day,  as  members  of  the  middle  and  lower 
middle  classes;  men  from  the  shop  and  the  farm; 
men  not  without  education  and  culture,  but  who 
were  not  readily  to  be  distinguished  from  the  great 


THE   CRADLE   OF   RACE  89 

mass  of  their  fellows,  some  of  whom  might  perhaps 
gain  fame  in  the  narrow  field  of  established  routine, 
but  who  had  not  yet  arrived.  They  were  "  used  to 
a  plain  country  life  and  the  innocent  trade  of  hus 
bandry,"  one  of  their  admirers  has  written.1  But 
what  was  common  to  all  of  them,  which  was  the 
dower  of  inheritance  and  the  unconscious  influence 
of  their  environment,  was  a  sense  of  order  and  sys 
tem,  of  thrift  and  prudent  management,  of  that  bent 
of  mind,  in  fact,  that  is  commercial  rather  than 
artistic.  These  men  had  in  them  the  qualities  that 
everywhere,  at  all  times,  under  all  circumstances, 
make  good  men  of  business,  and  this  faculty  was 
given  almost  instant  expression.  The  systematic 
methods  that  were  adopted  in  the  establishment  of 
the  settlements  and  their  governments,  that  began 
with  the  drawing  up  of  the  compact  in  the  cabin  of 
the  Mayflower,  which  in  its  phraseology  and  pur 
poses  suggests  the  scrivener  rather  than  the  soldier, 
that  later  expanded  into  a  more  complex  social  and 
political  code  as  the  needs  of  the  colonists  made 
necessary,  indicated  that  form  of  executive  ability 
which  is  the  special  attribute  of  a  commercial 
people.  We  find  little  evidence  of  military  ability 
or  the  influence  of  militarism  in  the  first  century  of 
the  American  colonies.  There  was  a  savage  foe  to 
fight,  and  from  the  beginning  measures  had  to  be 
concerted  for  defense  and  offense,  but  they  were 
incidental;  they  were  necessary  for  the  preservation 

1  Byington:  The  Puritan  in  England  and  in  New  England,  p.  53. 


90  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  protection  of  society;  they  were  part  of  the 
day's  work,  but  they  were  not  undertaken  for  the 
pure  love  of  fighting. 

Even  less  do  we  find  any  evidence  of  an  artistic 
spirit  or  a  love  of  art  pervading  the  people.  Either 
they  were  people  to  whom  art  in  their  former  sur 
roundings  had  made  no  appeal  or  in  whom  the 
artistic  feeling  was  checked  and  stifled  by  the  in 
tense  concentration  of  all  their  faculties  on  the 
problem  how  to  solve  the  struggle  for  existence.  It 
is  difficult,  impossible  in  fact,  to  determine  to  which 
cause  we  must  look  for  the  true  explanation,  and 
while,  of  course,  we  must  not  forget  the  underlying 
influences  of  the  Puritan  character  and  the  founda 
tion  on  which  the  Puritan  state  was  laid,  it  seems 
almost  incredible  that  a  body  of  English  men  and 
English  women  of  that  day,  of  intelligence  and  not 
without  education,  could  be  almost  primitive  in 
having  no  appreciation  of  art  or  content  not  to 
attempt  to  give  it  expression.  The  true  explana 
tion,  I  believe,  is  the  one  that  has  already  been 
advanced:  the  material  struggle  was  too  insistent 
to  afford  opportunity  for  anything  else.  If  this  rea 
soning  is  sound,  it  is  psychologically  of  great  im 
portance,  for  it  proves  that  the  aesthetic  civilization 
of  England,  at  that  day  highly  developed,  was  not 
transplanted  and  did  not  put  forth  new  roots  in  the 
new  soil,  but  for  a  time  withered  and  only  came  to 
life  again  at  a  later  period.  And  perhaps  more  im 
portant  than  all,  we  see  why  the  American  comes 


THE  CRADLE   OF  RACE  91 

naturally  by  his  love  of  and  aptitude  for  business. 
He  is  simply  fulfilling  the  law  of  heredity.  It  is  not 
alone  the  sins  of  the  father  that  are  visited  upon  the 
children  of  unborn  generations,  but  also  the  bent  of 
the  father's  mind  which  is  transmitted.  The  fathers 
of  the  race  were  men  of  business,  men  who  were 
fond  of  trade  and  to  whom  commerce  was  a  passion, 
and  their  children  have  followed  in  their  footsteps. 
We  shall  have  occasion  later  to  examine  into  this 
question  more  in  detail. 

It  is  proper  here  to  call  the  attention  of  the 
reader  to  what  thus  far  may  have  appeared  an 
anachronism.  In  logically  studying  the  develop 
ment  of  the  American  character,  I  have  begun 
with  the  Pilgrim  migration,  ignoring,  for  the  pre 
sent,  the  earlier  settlement  of  Virginia.  Were  this 
a  history  of  the  American  people  instead  of  a  study 
of  race  growth,  it  would  be  proper  to  begin  at  the 
beginning  with  the  first  settlement  of  the  English 
in  America,  at  Jamestown,  and,  using  that  as  the 
foundation  on  which  was  reared  the  superstructure 
of  an  enduring  civilization,  employ  the  chronolog 
ical  method  to  show  how  stone  was  laid  on  stone 
until  the  completed  edifice  crowned  the  labors 
of  the  master  builders.  But  the  coming  of  the  Eng 
lish  to  Virginia  in  the  first  decade  of  the  seven 
teenth  century  was  a  thing  trivial  compared  with 
the  momentous  consequences  that  followed  from 
the  landing  of  that  little  band  of  pioneers  on  the 
bleak  shores  of  Massachusetts  fourteen  years  later. 


92  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Had  the  English  occupation  of  America  proceeded 
along  the  lines  that  were  first  established,  there 
would  have  been  indeed  a  Nova  Albion  to  redound 
to  the  glory  of  English  conquest  and  fulfill  the 
dreams  of  Raleigh  and  Gilbert  and  those  other 
adventurers  of  undaunted  courage  and  splendid 
audacity  and  superb  imagination  who  laid  the 
foundation  for  England's  greatness,  commercial 
prosperity,  and  peculiar  genius  for  the  develop 
ment  and  government  of  alien  lands  and  peoples, 
but  the  psychological  results  would  have  been  dif 
ferent.  The  English  went  to  Jamestown  as  up  to 
that  time  they  had  gone  elsewhere,  with  two  dis 
tinct  objects  in  view.  They  went  to  find  wealth, 
the  fabulous  gold  that  they  believed  was  to  be 
obtained  without  effort,  and  to  provide  an  outlet 
for  a  population  that  even  then  pressed  upon  the 
limits  of  subsistence. 

"Their  principal  reason  for  colonizing  these 
parts  is  to  give  an  outlet  to  so  many  idle  and 
wretched  people  as  they  have  in  England,  and 
thus  to  prevent  the  dangers  that  may  be  feared 
from  them,"  Don  Alonso  de  Velasco,  the  Spanish 
Ambassador,  wrote  from  London  in  March,  1611, 
to  His  Catholic  Majesty.  Spanish  testimony  of  that 
day  cannot  be  accepted  without  due  allowance 
being  made  for  prejudice  and  jealousy,  but  no 
such  motives  governed  the  English  in  their  own 
frank  admissions.  In  "A  Letter  from  the  Council 
and  Company  of  the  honourable  Plantation  of 


THE   CRADLE   OF   RACE  93 

Virginia  to  the  Lord  Mayor,  Alderman  and  Com 
panies  of  London"  (probably  written  in  1608),  we 
find  the  first  suggestion  of  that  vicious  scheme 
of  "assisted  immigration"  that  so  seriously  em 
barrassed  the  United  States  two  centuries  and  a 
half  later. 

"Whereas  the  Lords  of  his  Majesties  Council," 
the  Virginia  Company  writes,  "Commissioners  for 
the  Subsidy,  desirous  to  ease  the  city  and  suburbs 
of  a  swarme  of  unnecessary  inmates,  as  a  contyn- 
ual  cause  of  death  and  famine,  and  the  very  orig 
inal  cause  of  all  the  Plagues  that  happen  in  this 
Kingdom,  have  advised  your  Lordship  and  your 
Brethren  in  a  case  of  state,  to  make  some  voluntary 
contribucon  for  their  remove  into  this  plantation 
of  Virginia,  which  we  understand  you  all  seemeth 
to  like  as  an  action  pleasing  to  God  and  happy  for 
this  Common  Wealth."  » 

The  English  in  the  beginning  of  their  coloniza 
tion  had  to  serve  both  God  and  Mammon  and 
appeal  to  the  spirit  of  the  age  by  a  judicious  mix 
ture  of  theology  and  greed. 

"And  thus,  as  an  action  concerning  God,  and 
the  advancement  of  religion,  the  present  ease, 
future  honor  and  safety  of  the  Kingdome,  the 
strength  of  our  Navy,  the  visible  hope  of  a  great 
and  rich  trade,  and  many  secrett  blessings  not  yett 
discovered;  wee  wholly  comend  the  cause  to  the 
wisdome  and  zeal  of  your  self  and  your  Brethren, 

1  Brown:  The  Genesis  of  the  United  States,  vol.  i,  p.  252. 


94  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  you  and  it,  and  us  all  to  the  holy  proteccon  of 
the  almightie."  l 

"The  eyes  of  all  Europe  are  looking  upon  our 
endeavors  to  spread  the  Gospell  among  the  Heathen 
people  of  Virginia,  to  plant  our  English  nation 
there,  and  to  settle  in  those  parts  which  may  be 
peculiar  to  our  nation,  so  that  we  may  thereby  be 
secured  from  being  beaten  out  of  all  profitts  of 
trade,  by  our  more  industrious  neighbors." 2 

This,  then,  was  the  controlling  motive  of  the 
men  who  established  the  first  English  colony  in 
Virginia  —  the  greed  for  gain  and  a  convenient 
way  of  disposing  of  "a  swarme  of  unnecessary 
inmates."  But  far  different  were  the  motives  that 
animated  the  Pilgrims.  They  embarked  on  the 
unknown  not  in  quest  of  gold,  not  for  the  glory  of 
God,  not  even  "for  the  future  honor  and  safety 
of  the  Kingdome,"  but  simply  that  they  might 
be  permitted  to  live  their  own  lives  in  their 
own  way  unhampered  by  fanatical  or  tyrannical 
rulers.3 

1  "A  Letter  from  the  Council  and  Company  of  the  honourable  Plantation 
in  Virginia  to  the  Lord  Mayor,  Alderman  and  Companies  of  London,"  prob 
ably  written  in  1608  or  1609. 

2  Brown:  The  Genesis  of  the  United  States,  vol.  i,  p.  463. 

3  In  accordance  with  the  spirit  of  the  age  the  propitiation  of  God  must  be 
sought  to  bring  success  to  a  commercial  venture,  and  the  governor  and  coun 
cil  of  the  Massachusetts  Company,  writing  to  Endicott,  tell  him  "that  the 
propagation  of  the  Gospel  is  the  thing  we  do  profess  above  all  to  be  our  aim 
in  settling  this  Plantation";  and  the  pious  hope  is  expressed  that  "the  Indians 
may,  in  God's  appointed  time,  be  reduced  to  the  obedience  of  the  Gospel  of 
Christ."    The  charter  avers  that  "to  win  and  invite  the  natives  of  the  country 
to  the  knowledge  and  obedience  of  the  only  true  God  and  Saviour  of  Man- 


THE   CRADLE   OF  RACE  95 

It  was  the  difference  in  character  between  the 
adventurer,  the  rover,  the  soldier  of  fortune,  the 
man  with  the  insatiable  Wanderlust,  who,  with 
childish  credulity,  despite  his  experience  of  the 
world,  always  believes  in  the  pot  of  gold  at  the 
end  of  the  rainbow,  and  the  austere  man  of  narrow 
conscience,  who  is  compensated  for  his  lack  of 
imagination  by  the  gift  of  steadfastness  that  pro 
duces  results  because  he  cannot  be  swerved  from 
his  purpose.  It  is  often  said  that  men  are  ruled  by 
their  imagination ;  but  it  would  be  truer  to  say  that 
they  are  governed  by  the  weakness  of  their  imagina 
tions.1  But,  curiously  enough,  the  foundation  of  the 
American  character — the  love  of  gain  and  the  acqui 
sition  of  wealth  in  commerce  —  was  laid  by  the  men 
whose  outlook  on  life  was  narrow  and  dwarfed  by 
the  barriers  of  over-refined  intellectual  development 
rather  than  the  wider  imagination  of  the  adven 
turer  whose  one  thought  was  the  pursuit  of  fortune. 
Later  I  shall  subject  these  qualities  to  more 

kind  and  the  Christian  faith,  is  our  royal  intention,  and  the  principal  end  of 
this  plantation." 

Always  this  extreme  solicitude  for  the  spiritual  welfare  of  the  Indian.  It 
is  touching.  "If  we  were  once  the  masters  of  their  Countrey  and  they  stood 
in  fears  of  us  (which  might  with  few  hands  imployed  about  nothing  else,  be 
in  short  time  to  passe)  it  were  an  easie  matter  to  make  them  willingly  to  for 
sake  the  divell,  to  embrace  the  faith  of  Jesus  Christ,  and  to  be  baptized. 
Besides,  you  cannot  easilie  judge  how  much  they  would  be  availeable  to  us  in 
our  discoveries  of  the  Countrey,  in  our  buildings  and  plantings,  and  quiet 
provisions  for  ourselves,  when  we  may  peaceably  passe  from  place  to  place 
without  neede  of  arms  or  guarde."  —  Whitaker,  Good  Newes  from  Virginia, 
1613.  Cf.  Brown:  Genesis  of  the  United  States,  vol.  ii,  p.  585. 

1  Bagehot:  The  English  Constitution,  p.  101. 


96  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

minute  analysis  and  explain  the  reasons  for  this 
seeming  contradiction;  for  the  present  it  is  neces 
sary  only  to  state  the  fact  and  to  ask  the  reader 
to  bear  in  mind  that,  from  the  very  first,  civiliza 
tion  in  America  was  composed  of  two  elements 
almost  antagonistic,  which  like  two  chemical  ele 
ments  can  only  be  fused  in  combination  with  a 
third.  That  agent  was  found  in  the  flux  of  common 
resistance  to  oppression,  and  the  States,  which 
Rufus  Choate  compared  "to  primordial  particles 
of  matter,  whose  natural  condition  is  to  repel  each 
other,  or,  at  least,  to  exist  in  their  own  independent 
identity,"  became  homogeneous. 

These  considerations,  I  hope,  will  make  it  suf 
ficiently  clear  why  the  writer  has  found  it  necessary 
to  begin  this  investigation  in  New  England  rather 
than  in  Virginia. 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   PURITAN 

IT  is  impossible  to  have  a  proper  comprehension 
of  the  character  of  the  American  people,  or  intel 
ligently  to  examine  into  the  causes  that  have  pro 
duced  this  race  and  made  them  what  they  are  in 
mind  and  spirit,  unless  at  the  outset  we  have  a  clear 
conception  of  the  men  from  whom  the  race  sprang. 
The  psychological  student  of  America  must  study 
the  Puritan  and  subject  him  to  as  minute  ana 
lysis  as  the  student  of  anthropology  gives  to  his 
study  of  the  caves  of  a  prehistoric  age,  or  the  physi 
ologist  to  learn  the  vital  relation  of  the  heart  to  the 
body.  The  Puritan  is  the  heart  of  American  civil 
ization. 

In  attempting  to  bring  back  to  life  the  figures 
of  the  dead,  in  revisualizing  lineaments  that  are 
shadowed  by  the  haze  of  time,  in  putting  a  histori 
cal  character  upon  the  modern  scene,  there  is  always 
the  danger  of  interpreting  motives  and  the  play  of 
forces  by  the  light  of  the  present  instead  of  the 
obscurity  in  which  men  then  moved. 

Excellent  indeed  is  the  perspective  of  history;  it 
has  made  many  things  clear  that  at  the  time  they 
happened  were  vague;  but  the  farther  we  are  re 
moved  from  a  great  event  the  more  it  is  softened 


98  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  often  distorted  by  distance ;  just  as  the  majestic 
fane  viewed  by  the  traveler  from  afar  impresses  him 
with  its  bulk;  but  to  appreciate  the  soul  of  the 
artist  who  created  it,  to  be  touched  by  that  spirit 
of  religious  devotion,  it  must  be  seen  close  at  hand. 

Correctly  to  understand  the  seventeenth  century, 
it  must  be  read  not  through  the  eyes  of  the 
twentieth  century,  but  the  focus  must  be  readjusted ; 
the  mind  must  throw  off  all  the  progress  and  human 
izing  influences  that  are  the  gifts  of  each  century 
to  the  next  and  reincarnate  itself.  Unless  that  is 
done,  unless  we  approach  the  subject  with  that 
intrinsic  detachment,  we  bring  on  the  stage  not 
men  but  puppets,  lay  figures  properly  proportioned, 
perhaps,  but  clothed  in  anachronism. 

In  the  first  place  we  are  to  remember  that  in 
the  seventeenth  century  life  and  religion  were  one. 
They  were  so  inseparably  interwoven  that  they 
could  not  be  dissociated.  Religion  was  a  part  of 
the  conduct  of  life,  of  all  life,  of  all  society;  the 
respect  and  obedience  that  were  given  to  consti 
tuted  authority  were  founded  on  the  acceptance  of 
religious  belief  and  practice.  In  the  twentieth  cen 
tury  life  and  religion  are  apart;  powerful  though 
the  influence  of  religion  is  to-day,  it  does  not  con 
trol  life  or  society.  Unless  we  clearly  bear  this  in 
mind  it  will  be  impossible  justly  to  estimate  the 
Puritan  character  or  to  find  an  adequate  explana 
tion  for  the  many  seemingly  inexplicable  things 
done  by  the  Puritan. 


THE   PURITAN  99 

The  Puritan,  idealized,  sublimated,  painted  in 
monochromes  against  a  colorless  background,  em 
blem  of  passionless  existence  and  dead  to  human 
emotions,  his  character  distorted  by  injudicious  and 
over-zealous  admirers  and  defenders,  his  motives 
misunderstood,  —  it  is  this  figure  that  obscures  the 
founders  of  the  race;  and  we  have  been  made  to 
think  of  the  Puritan  as  slow  of  speech,  perpetually 
sunk  in  the  gloom  of  his  own  conscience,  too  solemn 
to  see  that  life  is  ever  a  farce  even  when  tragedy, 
lingering  on  earth  but  longing  for  heaven.  Now  as 
a  matter  of  fact  these  progenitors  of  a  lion's  breed, 
these  pioneers  who  fought  for  the  right  as  they 
fought  against  Nature,  to  whom  life  was  something 
more  than  the  antechamber  to  hope,  were  a  prac 
tical  people  not  without  a  sense  of  rational  pleasure. 

It  is  not  necessary  to  trace  the  causes  that  pro 
duced  Puritanism  in  England;  they  are  known  to 
every  schoolboy  who  has  studied  in  even  an  ele 
mentary  form  the  history  of  England  or  the  United 
States,  but  it  is  necessary  for  an  intelligent  compre 
hension  of  one  of  the  greatest  social  movements  in 
the  world's  history  to  clear  away  some  of  the  mis 
apprehensions,  the  false  impressions,  the  romance 
that  in  the  course  of  three  centuries  have  grown  up 
around  the  majestic  figure  of  the  Puritan,  which, 
like  the  weeds  about  a  temple,  dwarf  its  beauty  and 
distort  its  proportions. 

To  begin  with,  we  must  destroy  the  very  common 
idea  that  the  Pilgrims  and  the  Puritans  were  intel- 


100          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

lectually  and  spiritually  blood  of  the  same  blood 
and  flesh  of  the  same  flesh.  They  were  no  such 
thing.  In  everything  that  makes  for  character  —  in 
the  concept  of  life,  in  the  relation  of  man  to  man,  in 
the  code  that  governed  the  family  and  the  family 
magnified,  the  state  —  "  the  Puritan  differs  from  the 
Pilgrim  as  the  Hebrew  prophet  from  Saint  John/' 
the  late  Senator  Hoar  of  Massachusetts,  himself 
a  descendant  in  direct  descent  from  three  cen 
turies  of  Puritan  ancestors,  said  on  one  occasion.1 
And  he  elaborated  his  theme  in  this  striking 
passage :  — 

"The  Puritan  differs  from  the  Pilgrim  as  the 
Hebrew  prophet  from  Saint  John.  Abraham,  ready 
to  sacrifice  Isaac  at  the  command  of  God ;  Jeremiah, 
uttering  his  terrible  prophecy  of  the  downfall  of 
Judea ;  Brutus,  condemning  his  son  to  death ;  Brutus, 
slaying  his  friend  for  the  liberty  of  Rome ;  Aristides, 
going  into  exile,  are  his  spiritual  progenitors,  as 
Stonewall  Jackson  was  of  his  spiritual  kindred. 
You  will  find  him  wherever  men  are  sacrificing  life 
or  the  delights  of  life  on  the  altar  of  Duty. 

"But  the  Pilgrim  is  of  a  gentler  and  a  lovelier 
nature.  He,  too,  if  Duty  or  Honor  call,  is  ready  for 
the  sacrifice.  But  his  weapon  is  love  and  not  hate. 
His  spirit  is  the  spirit  of  John,  the  beloved  Disciple, 
the  spirit  of  Grace,  Mercy,  and  Peace.  His  memory 
is  as  sweet  and  fragrant  as  the  perfume  of  the  little 

1  Speech  at  the  banquet  of  the  New  England  Society,  Charleston,  S.  C., 
December  22,  1898. 


THE   PURITAN  101 

flower  which  gave  its  name  to  the  ship  which 
brought  him  over." 

There  are  few  more  romantic  episodes  on  the 
great  canvas  of  history  than  the  sailing  of  the  Pil 
grims  and  their  arrival  in  the  land  of  promise  and 
hope.  There  are  few  that  so  vividly  thrill  the 
imagination  and  appeal  to  all  that  is  best  in  man 
as  the  recollection  of  that  day  when  the  Pilgrims 
set  foot  on  the  rock  that  Americans  hold  sacred. 
There  are  few  that  have  so  admirably  served  as  the 
inspiration  for  painter  and  poet  and  story-teller.  It 
is  background  perfect  in  its  composition  and  detail 
to  make  that  gentle  figure  of  the  Pilgrim  stand 
forth  in  all  its  majesty.  Painter  and  poet  and  story 
teller  have  labored  with  rare  devotion  to  exalt  his 
virtues  and  with  loving  hands  have  hidden  his  vices. 
He  stands  in  imagination  the  progenitor  of  a  race 
and  the  founder  of  a  new  social  system.  And  all  the 
labor  has  been  in  vain. 

The  Pilgrim  made  only  the  very  slightest  impress 
upon  the  American  character.  He  founded  no  social 
institution.  He  gave  birth  to  no  political  system. 
So  far  as  the  America  of  to-day  is  concerned,  it  is  as 
if  he  had  never  existed.  It  is  to  the  Puritan  and  not 
to  the  Pilgrim  that  America  owes  what  she  is. 

The  Pilgrim  stands  in  the  same  relation  to  pre 
sent-day  America  as  the  Saxon  Heptarchy  does  to 
present-day  England.  What  the  Norman  Conquest 
wrought  we  all  know;  and  it  was  the  Puritan  who 
played  the  part  of  the  Norman  in  American  race 


102          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

development.  The  Pilgrim  simply  became  merged 
into  the  Puritan  as  all  cities  were  absorbed  into  the 
Roman  state;  and  in  a  very  short  time  the  Pilgrim 
no  longer  existed.  But  the  Puritan  lived;  he  lives 
to-day.  The  difference  between  the  Pilgrim  and  the 
Puritan  is  not  of  the  greatest  importance  histor 
ically,  but  psychologically  it  is  of  the  utmost  im 
portance  that  the  distinction  should  be  made. 

The  Pilgrims  were  not  virile  enough  to  found  a 
race ;  the  Puritans  were.  When  the  Plymouth  Colony 
was  fifteen  years  old  it  numbered  only  five  hun 
dred  people.  Twelve  years  after  the  Puritans  had 
first  settled  in  Massachusetts  they  counted  twenty 
thousand  souls.  They  had  founded  Harvard  Col 
lege;  with  that  insatiable  land  hunger  that  was  in 
the  blood  they  had  planted  colonies  in  Connecticut 
and  Rhode  Island  and  New  Hampshire;  they  had 
built  churches  and  provided  for  their  ministers; 
they  were  even  in  that  early  day  living  in  com 
parative  comfort.  It  staggers  the  imagination  when 
one  recalls  all  that  had  been  accomplished  in  so 
short  a  time.  The  mother  colony,  its  people  in 
fluenced  by  the  easy-going  characteristics  of  the 
Dutch,  which  they  had,  perhaps,  unconsciously 
assimilated,  slowly,  very  slowly,  gained  in  strength, 
but  gave  no  promise  of  developing  into  a  nation. 
The  younger  colony,  almost  at  a  single  bound, 
displayed  its  potential  power  and  showed  that  its 
people  had  in  them  the  spirit  of  the  nation  build 
ers.  One  would  like  to  let  poetic  fancy  dwell  on  the 


THE   PURITAN  103 

Pilgrims,  for  there  is  no  period  in  history  more 
alluring  than  this,  and  no  people  more  entranc 
ing  to  the  lover  of  the  poetic  and  the  imaginative 
than  these  simple  but  courageous  folk  who  loved 
God  and  their  fellow  men;  who  with  such  perfect 
trust  committed  themselves  to  the  benign  protec 
tion  of  their  Ruler  and  Guardian;  who  under  ad 
versity  were  patient,  and  who  in  all  things  had 
faith.  Sublime  qualities  these,  a  much-needed  in 
spiration  in  a  day  of  gross  materialism  and  little 
faith,  but,  alas,  not  the  qualities  that  make  a  living 
race.  I  must  not  be  understood  as  implying  that  the 
Pilgrim  served  no  useful  purpose.  He  did.  He  was 
an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  fate,  and  fate  has 
never  misused  an  instrument.  He  had  a  mission  to 
perform,  and  he  performed  it  successfully  within 
the  limits  of  his  capacity.  He  moved  across  the 
rough  stage,  but  the  great  drama  of  life  in  the  New 
World,  with  all  its  pathos  and  struggle  and  triumph, 
was  played  by  men  cast  in  a  sterner  mould  and 
with  a  grimmer  appreciation  of  tragedy.  That  the 
Pilgrim  never  had. 

Mr.  Hoar  has  poetically  compared  the  memory 
of  the  Pilgrim  to  the  sweetness  and  fragrance  of 
the  perfume  of  the  little  flower  which  gave  its  name 
to  the  ship  which  brought  him  over.  True,  indeed, 
is  the  characterization,  which  unintentionally  re 
veals  the  limitations  of  the  Pilgrim  and  explains 
why  he  made  no  mark  on  the  continent  that  lay  at 
his  feet.  Before  men  can  appreciate  the  delicate 


104          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

beauty  of  the  coloring  of  the  hidden  flower  and  its 
exquisite  odor,  they  must  go  into  the  forest  and  fell 
great  oaks  to  shelter  them.  Men,  men  made  reso 
lute,  obstinate,  courageous  by  the  fierce  spirit  of 
persecution  and  the  determination  to  meet  oppres 
sion  with  resistance,  were  required  to  bring  forth 
a  new  life,  not  the  men  "of  a  gentler  and  lovelier 
nature"  whose  "weapon  is  love  and  not  hate." 
Hatred,  the  thirst  for  revenge,  is  a  very  detrimental 
quality  in  the  individual  and,  as  a  rule,  does  more 
injury  to  him  who  nourishes  it  than  to  its  victim, 
but  in  a  race  or  a  people  it  has  often  had  beneficial 
results.  It  has  hardened  the  mould  of  character,  it 
has  made  even  the  timid  bold,  it  has  made  the 
weak  face  peril  and  death.  The  great  sweep  of 
history  is  the  record  of  men  who  have  had  a  griev 
ance  and  dared  to  redress  it,  not  the  chronicle  of 
men  whose  weapon  was  love.  In  the  ultimate  the 
tyrants  have  done  more  for  mankind,  by  invol 
untarily  giving  impetus  to  the  qualities  of  self- 
reliance  and  a  love  of  liberty,  than  the  beneficent 
rulers  whom  their  subjects  called  the  just  and  the 
merciful. 

The  Pilgrims,  the  men  who  left  England  and 
found  a  temporary  asylum  in  Holland  before  their 
great  hegira  to  the  New  World,  were  Church  of 
England  men,  who  separated  from  the  faith  of  their 
fathers  because  they  objected  to  the  union  of 
Church  and  State;  and  the  corruption  into  which 
the  Church  had  then  fallen  was  to  them  abominable. 


THE   PURITAN  105 

Hence  they  were  called  Separatists  or  Brownists, 
from  the  name  of  their  founder,  Robert  Browne,  a 
man  of  gentle  birth,  a  Cambridge  graduate,  and  a 
relative  of  Lord  Burleigh,  one  of  Queen  Elizabeth's 
great  ministers  of  state.  This  is  so  well  known  that 
it  seems  almost  unnecessary  again  to  restate  it ;  but 
so  many  persons  have  such  vague  ideas  about  the 
origin  of  the  Pilgrim  movement  that  the  salient 
facts  must  be  emphasized  for  the  better  understand 
ing  of  subsequent  events. 

The  history  of  the  Church,  of  all  churches,  until 
humanity  and  religion  became  one  (and  they  were 
far  apart  in  the  early  days  of  religion),  has  always 
been  the  fierce  persecution  of  those  who  questioned 
its  authority  or  would  attempt  to  make  its  practices 
more  nearly  conform  to  its  spiritual  teachings. 
Itinerant  preachers  in  the  Church  of  England  who 
urged  upon  the  simple  country  folk  to  live  better 
and  purer  lives  fell  under  the  persecution  of  the 
Established  Church,  and  to  escape  their  enemies 
fled  to  Holland,  where  men  might  without  inter 
ference  worship  their  God  in  their  own  way. 
Those  who  remained  suffered  for  the  sake  of  con 
science.  "For  some  were  taken  and  clapt  up  in 
prison,  others  had  their  houses  besett  and  watcht 
night  and  day,  and  hardly  escaped  their  hands ;  and 
yet  most  were  faine  to  flie  and  leave  their  houses 
and  habitations,  and  the  means  of  their  livelihood. 
Yet  these  and  many  other  sharper  things  which 
afterward  befell  them,  were  no  other  than  they 


106          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

looked  for,  and  therefore  were  ye  better  prepared 
to  bear  them  by  ye  assistance  of  God's  grace  and 
spirit."  l 

Nothing  more  concisely  typifies  the  character  of 
the  Pilgrim,  his  whole  conception  of  life,  his  soft 
ness,  his  almost  passionate  prayer  to  be  let  alone, 
than  his  circumlocutory  flight  to  America;  and 
nothing  more  vividly  contrasts  the  character  of  the 
Pilgrim  and  the  Puritan  than  the  reasons  which 
made  the  latter  leave  the  land  of  his  birth. 

When  the  Pilgrim  found  that  he  was  an  object  of 
persecution  because  his  worship  of  God  was  not  that 
of  the  great  majority  of  the  nation,  he  went  to  Hol 
land  —  and  this  is  to  be  noted  —  not  as  a  rebel 
against  his  sovereign  or  to  be  a  thorn  in  the  side  of 
the  kingdom  that  had  thrust  him  out;  he  went  not 
to  found  a  new  state  or  to  lead  in  a  reformation. 
Peace  and  quietness  he  craved,  and  he  believed  he 
would  find  them  among  those  tolerant  Dutch  folk 
to  whom  sects  and  formularies  meant  less  than  they 
did  to  any  other  people  of  Europe  at  that  time.  He 
prayed  and  he  worked,  for  he  was  always  indus 
trious  and  work  seemed  the  natural  condition  of 
man,  but  he  was  a  stranger  apart  from  the  people 
among  whom  he  tarried.  And  it  was  this  feeling  of 
isolation  and  of  being  a  stranger  in  a  strange  land 
that  led  to  the  greater  flight. 

That  insularity  of  the  English  that  has  made  the 
race  what  it  is  was  in  the  blood  of  the  Pilgrims. 

1  Bradford's  History  of  Plymouth  Plantation,  p.  14. 


THE  PURITAN  107 

The  little  children  they  had  brought  with  them  were 
growing  up  and  other  children  were  born  unto  them, 
and  they  wanted  these  children  to  be  English-speak 
ing  and  English-thinking  and  not  half-English  and 
half-Dutch.  The  motives  that  inspired  their  flight, 
as  one  of  their  historians  tells  us,  were  that  they 
might  enjoy  liberty  of  conscience,  and  keep  their 
own  language  and  the  name  of  Englishmen,  and 
train  their  children  as  they  were  trained,  and  en 
large  the  Church  of  Christ.1  Beyond  the  seas  was  a 
country  in  which  Englishmen  were  settling,  a  coun 
try  that  promised  rich  rewards  to  the  industrious 
and  God-fearing,  in  which  God  might  be  worshiped 
without  the  fear  of  persecution  of  king  or  clergy. 
There  was  to  be  found  that  freedom  and  liberty, 
that  perfect  right  to  live  according  to  the  dictates 
of  their  conscience,  that  was  denied  them  in  the  Old 
World.  And  they  went. 

Now  see  how  differently  the  Puritan  faced  the 
problem  that  so  vexed  the  soul  of  the  gentler  Pil 
grim.  The  Puritan  was  no  separatist.  He  was  a 
Church  of  England  man,  but  he  was  at  one  with  the 
Pilgrim  in  demanding  reformation.  Christ's  vicar 
on  earth  was  no  longer  Christlike.  The  Church  was 
rotten  with  corruption ;  its  ministers,  instead  of  set 
ting  the  example  of  holy  living  and  holy  dying,  were 
a  stench  in  the  nostrils  of  men  who  lived  decently 
and  died  in  the  profound  consolation  of  a  just  but 
merciful  Creator;  the  ceremonies  of  the  Church,  the 

1  Young's  Chronicles,  p.  381. 


108          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

vestments  of  its  priests,  its  prayers  and  forms, 
savored  of  the  mockery  of  Rome  and  were  abhor 
rent  to  men  who  had  drawn  a  new  inspiration  from 
the  stern  morality  of  Calvin.  "Some  men  of  the 
greatest  parts  and  most  extensive  knowledge  that 
the  nation  at  this  time  produced,  could  not  enjoy 
any  peace  of  mind,  because  obliged  to  hear  prayers 
offered  up  to  the  Divinity  by  a  priest  covered  with 
a  white  linen  vestment."  1  Yet  the  Church  was  their 
Church,  not  to  be  destroyed  but  to  be  brought  back 
to  its  old  ways,  to  be  reformed,  but  to  be  reformed 
from  within  and  not  from  without.  The  Puritans  in 
England  stood  up  manfully  to  the  fray.  They  had 
no  thought  of  going  to  Holland  or  elsewhere  to 
establish  a  Church  more  in  consonance  with  their 
idea.  The  Church  they  had  to  reform  was  in  Eng 
land,  and  it  was  there  the  battle  was  to  be  fought. 
And  fight  they  did  with  all  the  zeal  and  courageous 
determination  that  men  display  only  when  they  are 
fighting  for  a  principle ;  how  well  they  fought  is  told 
in  the  story  of  Cromwell'  and  his  psalm-singing 
Ironsides  at  Marston  Moor  and  Naseby;  and  their 
vengeance  went  unsatisfied  until  the  king  they 
fought  laid  his  head  on  the  block  and  the  great 
principle  of  free  speech  and  a  free  parliament  was 
forever  established.  These  were  the  men  who  went 
forth  to  found  the  Massachusetts  colony.  They 
brought  their  religion  with  them,  they  brought  the 
same  spirit  of  resistance  to  the  evil  practices  that 

1  Hume:  History  of  England,  p.  526. 


THE  PURITAN  109 

the  Church  sanctioned,  and  the  same  determination 
to  purify  the  Church.  The  Church  was  still  to  them 
their  spiritual  mother  whose  blessing  they  invoked. 
"  We  separate  not  from  the  Church  of  England,  but 
from  its  corruptions,"  they  said. 

A  nation  to  endure  must  be  animated  by  higher 
and  nobler  reasons  for  its  existence  than  the  mere 
material  desires  that  have  led  to  the  propagation  of 
the  animal  species.  Ease,  mere  wealth,  the  support 
of  life  under  the  most  favorable  conditions  are  all 
insufficient,  and  in  the  end  they  destroy.  A  race  to 
live,  a  nation  to  grow  and  become  truly  great,  must 
have  implanted  in  its  breast  aspirations  and  ideals ; 
it  is  of  no  consequence  what  form  those  aspirations 
and  ideals  take,  but  they  must  be  a  beacon  light 
toward  which  the  eyes  of  men  forever  turn.  One 
reason  why  savage  races  have  become  extinct  is  that 
they  were  content  with  their  material  surroundings 
and  were  not  quickened  by  the  prompting  of  the 
higher  things.  They  were  deaf  to  the  spiritual 
voice.  The  great  nations  who  have  moulded  civil 
ization  have  felt  the  ennobling  influence  of  the 
infinite  mystery;  they  have  yearned  for  that  some 
thing  that  would  lift  them  above  their  sordid 
surroundings.  It  is  immaterial  whether  the  ideal 
for  which  they  strove  was  personal  liberty  or  lib 
erty  of  conscience;  religion,  which  often  assumed 
a  form  material  rather  than  ideal;  the  betterment 
of  mankind.  Whatever  form  it  assumed,  it  was  for 
the  moment  an  idealistic  conception,  an  effort  to 


110          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

lift  the  race  to  a  higher  plane,  mistaken  as  were 
the  methods  so  often  employed.  But  the  men  who 
fought  for  what  they  believed  to  be  right  were  men 
who  were  not  afraid  to  shed  their  blood  in  defense 
of  the  right.  They  fought  because  the  path  to  the 
ideal  had  to  be  hewed  out  with  the  sword,  and  in 
its  making  many  men  must  be  overcome  by  the  heat 
and  burden  of  the  fray.  They  did  not  run  away. 

The  Puritans  were  men  with  ideals  and  aspira 
tions.  Their  ideal  was  a  state  in  which  the  word  of 
God  was  the  law  of  man,  —  "a  practical  world 
based  on  Belief  in  God,"  Carlyle  says.  Their 
aspiration  was  to  found  a  state  with  the  Bible  as 
their  constitution. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

PURITANISM   GIVES    BIRTH   TO    DEMOCRACY 

AT  the  time  when  the  great  Puritan  migration 
took  place  from  England  to  Massachusetts,  be 
tween  the  years  1620  and  1630,  England  was  at 
heart  Puritan  and  the  Puritans  were  in  the  ma 
jority.  Puritanism  had  its  adherents  and  supporters 
in  all  ranks  of  life.  Great  nobles,  leading  mem 
bers  of  the  House  of  Commons,  city  merchants  who 
with  splendid  audacity  were  financing  ventures  and 
expeditions  to  all  parts  of  the  world  and  laying 
the  foundation  for  England's  incomparable  com 
merce;  landed  squires,  the  men  who  have  always 
been  the  backbone  of  English  solidity  and  con 
servatism;  country  preachers,  the  common  people, 
the  dwellers  in  villages  as  well  as  those  in  London 
and  the  other  large  cities,  were  in  favor  of  the 
reformation  of  the  Church  and  a  wider  political 
liberty. 

It  is  important  that  the  position  and  strength  of 
the  Puritan  party  in  England  should  be  clearly 
understood;  but  it  is  perhaps  even  more  important 
to  dwell  with  emphasis  upon  the  truth  that  the 
Puritan  movement,  born  in  the  throes  of  religious 
conviction,  matured  into  a  political  party.  It  was 
a  protest  against  the  existing  order. 


112          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

The  pictures  and  stories  of  the  Pilgrims  setting 
sail  in  their  frail  bark,  their  landing  amidst  sur 
roundings  so  strange  and  forbidding,  their  trials 
and  sufferings,  their  scanty  supplies,  convey  to  the 
modern  mind  that  the  Puritans  —  and  this  confu 
sion  of  idea  between  the  Pilgrim  and  the  Puritan 
seems  almost  impossible  of  rectification  -  -  were  the 
prototypes  of  that  stream  of  emigration  that  for 
three  quarters  of  a  century  has  flowed  through  the 
gates  of  America  in  ever-increasing  volume,  and 
that,  like  the  modern  emigrant,  the  Puritan  came  to 
his  new  home  with  a  pack  on  his  back,  unkempt, 
friendless,  and  poor.  These  hardy  pioneers  --  Pil 
grims  as  well  as  Puritans  —  had  to  bear  the  brunt 
of  discomfort  as  the  vanguard  of  every  army  of 
civilization  always  must;  but  it  was  not  an  army 
of  tatterdemalions  without  stores  or  provisions.  The 
Puritans  were  much  better  provided  than  the  Pil 
grims,  but  even  they  had  some  things  that  make  for 
comfort  rather  than  solely  for  necessity.  Mourt  in 
his  Relation  tells  of  "a  green  rug  and  three  or  four 
cushions"  that  were  used  by  the  Pilgrims  in  the 
ceremonies  attending  the  state  reception  given  to 
Massasoit,  which  "were,  of  course,  necessarily 
brought  in  the  M  ay -Flower,"  Ames  says.1  In  case  the 
reader  may  have  overlooked  it,  I  call  his  attention 
to  the  fact  that  the  rug  was  green,  which  is  evidence 
that  the  mythical  belief  in  the  Pilgrim  and  the 
Puritan  hatred  of  bright  colors  has  no  existence. 

1  Ames:  The  May-Flower  and  her  Log,  p.  221. 


DEMOCRACY  113 

From  the  beginning  the  Puritans  were  well  pro 
vided.  They  were  backed  by  strong  interests  in 
England,  who  had  the  money  to  charter  ships  and 
furnish  them  with  all  that  was  needed  to  support 
a  colony  until  it  could  stand  alone.  In  the  twelve 
years  of  Archbishop  Laud's  administration,  Neal 
tells  us,  about  four  thousand  planters  left  England, 
"  who  laid  the  foundation  of  several  little  towns  and 
villages  up  and  down  the  country,  carrying  over 
with  them  in  materials,  money  and  cattle,  etc.,  not 
less  than  to  the  value  of  one  hundred  and  ninety 
thousand  pounds,  besides  the  merchandise  in 
tended  for  traffick  with  the  Indians.  Upon  the 
whole,  it  has  been  computed,  that  the  four  settle 
ments  of  New  England,  viz.  Plimouth,  the  Massa 
chusetts  Bay,  Connecticut  and  Newhaven,  all  of 
which  were  accomplished  before  the  beginning  of 
the  civil  wars,  drained  England  of  four  or  five 
hundred  thousand  pounds,  (a  very  great  sum  in 
those  days)  and  if  the  persecution  of  the  Puritans 
had  continued  twelve  years  longer,  it  is  thought 
that  a  fourth  part  of  the  riches  of  the  kingdom 
would  have  passed  out  of  it  through  this  channel." l 

Not  only  were  they  well  provided  with  the  things 
necessary  to  set  a  young  colony  on  the  road  to 
material  success,  but  they  were  captained  by  men  of 
strength  and  ability  and  standing.  They  were  not 
men  to  whom  life  had  been  a  failure  and  who,  hav 
ing  nothing  to  lose,  could  afford  to  risk  much  for 

1  Neal:  History  of  the  Puritan,  vol.  i,  p.  546. 


114          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

great  gain.  In  1630,  only  ten  years  after  the  little 
company  of  the  Mayflower  had  for  the  first  time 
laid  eyes  on  their  new  home,  John  Winthrop  and 
seven  hundred  companions  set  sail  in  eleven  ships. 
"It  was  more  than  a  colony,  it  was  the  migration  of 
a  people."  The  managers  of  the  expedition  were 
Winthrop,  a  lawyer  in  the  prime  of  life,  of  good 
family  and  comfortable  estate,  and  worthy;  John 
Humphrey  and  Isaac  Johnson,  sons-in-law  of  the 
Earl  of  Lincoln;  Thomas  Dudley,  manager  of  the 
Earl's  estates;  Theophilus  Eaton,  a  London  mer 
chant  who  had  served  the  king  as  minister  to 
Denmark;  William  Vassall,  an  opulent  West  India 
proprietor.  "The  principal  planters  of  Massachu 
setts,"  Chalmers  says,  "were  English  country 
gentlemen  of  no  inconsiderable  fortunes;  of  en 
larged  understandings  improved  by  liberal  educa 
tion;  of  extensive  ambition  concealed  under  the 
appearance  of  religious  humility."  Their  concealed 
ambition  was  to  lay  the  foundations  of  "  a  renovated 
England,  secure  in  freedom  and  pure  in  religion." 
Before  sailing,  Winthrop  issued  an  address  "  to 
the  rest  of  their  Brethren,  in  and  of  the  Church  of 
England."  It  gave  assurance  that  "we  desire  you 
would  be  pleased  to  take  notice  that  the  principals 
and  body  of  our  company  esteem  it  our  honor  to 
call  the  Church  of  England  from  whence  wee  rise, 
our  deare  mother,  and  cannot  part  from  our  na 
tive  countrie,  where  she  specially  resideth,  without 
much  sadness  of  heart  and  many  tears  in  our  eyes, 


DEMOCRACY  115 

ever  acknowledging  that  such  hopes  and  parts  as 
we  have  obtained  in  the  common  salvation,  we 
have  received  in  her  bosom  and  sucked  it  from  her 
breasts.  We  leave  it  not  therefore  as  loathing  that 
milk  wherein  we  were  nourished  there,  but  blessing 
God  for  the  parentage  and  education,  as  members 
of  the  same  body,  while  we  have  breath,  we  shall 
syncerely  indeavour  the  continuance  and  abund 
ance  of  her  welfare." 

The  rank  and  file  in  the  earlier  days  of  the 
migration  were  men  of  sterling  character  and  cor 
rect  morals,  many  of  them  of  substance  and  well 
educated,  and  all  of  them,  rich  and  poor,  animated 
by  a  very  high  and  noble  purpose.  They  were  un 
like  the  earlier  colonists  who  went  to  Virginia,  who 
were  a  mixed  company  of  adventurers,  bankrupts, 
and  criminals;  they  were  of  a  different  social  class 
from  the  Mayflower's  Pilgrims.  The  leaders  who 
urged  upon  their  followers  to  leave  England  and 
begin  life  anew  "were  the  puritan  ministers,  who 
being  hunted  from  one  diocese  to  another,  at  last 
chose  this  wilderness  for  their  retreat,"  Neal  records, 
and  he  adds:  "I  have  before  me  a  list  of  seventy- 
seven  divines,  who  became  pastors  of  sundry  little 
churches  and  congregations  in  that  country  be 
fore  the  year  1640,  all  of  whom  were  in  orders  in 
the  Church  of  England."  He  bears  this  tribute  to 
their  worth:  "Though  they  were  not  all  of  the  first 
rank  for  deep  and  extensive  learning,  yet  they  had 
a  better  share  of  it  than  most  of  the  neighboring 


116          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

clergy;  and  which  is  of  more  consequence,  they 
were  men  of  strict  sobriety  and  virtue;  plain,  seri 
ous,  affectionate  preachers,  exactly  conformable  in 
sentiment  to  the  doctrinal  articles  of  the  Church  of 
England,  and  took  a  great  deal  of  pains  to  promote 
Christian  knowledge,  and  a  reformation  of  manners 
in  their  several  parishes." 1 

Later  the  tares  were  mixed  with  the  wheat,  but 
Longfellow  was  not  giving  rein  merely  to  the  fancy 
of  his  poetical  imagination  when  he  wrote :  - 

"  God  had  sifted  three  kingdoms  to  find  the  wheat  for  this  planting, 
Then  had  sifted  the  wheat,  as  the  living  seed  of  a  nation; 
So  say  the  chronicles  old,  and  such  is  the  faith  of  the  people!" 

The  Puritans  had  a  twofold  purpose  in  coming 
to  America.  One  was  purely  commercial,  the  other 
was  religious.  It  was  the  religious  element  in  the 
Puritan  that  gave  birth  to  American  democracy 
and  American  political  institutions,  that  turned  the 
current  of  English  civilization  when  the  drift  of 
events  carried  it  against  the  shores  of  the  New 
World.  History  affords  no  parallel  instance  of 
a  political  system  resulting  from  an  attempt  to 
reform  a  church  polity  by  men  who  were  members 
of  that  church  and  who  believed  in  it  as  their 
spiritual  guide.  In  all  the  determining  factors  that 
go  to  make  a  race,  the  influence  of  religion  on 
national  character  is  one  of  the  most  important 
and  one  of  the  most  difficult  scientifically  to  esti 
mate.  The  religion  of  Rome  and  Greece,  of  Egypt 

1  Neal:  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  546. 


DEMOCRACY  117 

and  Asia,  of  Protestant  and  Catholic  Europe,  of 
tribes  so  barbarous  that  they  had  not  the  faintest 
conception  of  civilization  but  to  whom  religion  was 
the  essence  of  life,  profoundly  modified  national 
character  and  institutions. 

Elizabeth  came  to  the  throne  when  the  embers 
of  the  fires  of  Smithfield  were  still  smouldering. 
Mary  had  sent  to  the  stake  more  than  three  hun 
dred  martyrs  who  counted  their  lives  as  nothing 
in  defense  of  the  faith.  Hundreds  fled  to  escape 
imprisonment  and  death.  The  executioner  and  the 
torturer  reaped  their  rich  harvest  and  spared 
neither  young  nor  old.  Cranmer,  the  Archbishop  of 
Canterbury,  beloved  of  his  people,  venerated  for 
his  saintly  character,  faced  the  fagot  unflinchingly, 
and  his  ashes  were  a  greater  inspiration  to  the  cause 
of  Protestantism  than  his  living  voice.  Latimer, 
with  prophetic  vision,  as  the  executioner  applied 
the  torch,  looked  beyond  the  flames  and  saw  an 
even  greater  light,  and  delivered  this  last  message  of 
cheer:  "We  shall  this  day  light  such  a  candle,  by 
God's  grace,  in  England,  as,  I  trust,  shall  never  be 
put  out."  It  was  a  pillar  of  fire  rather  than  a 
candle,  and  it  lighted  the  people  of  England  to 
their  liberty. 

A  new  life  was  beginning  in  England.  It  was  a 
day  of  great  deeds.  A  new  spirit  entered  into  the 
nation.  The  deathless  voice  of  English  literature 
was  born.  The  seas  swarmed  with  English  cap 
tains,  who  knew  no  fear,  who  fought  the  elements  as 


118          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

they  fought  their  foes,  who  laid  virgin  continents 
and  the  spoils  of  Spanish  galleons  at  the  feet  of  the 
Virgin  Queen.  The  world  rang  with  the  achieve 
ments  of  the  English,  and  the  whole  people  felt  the 
thrill  of  power  and  rejoiced  in  the  terror  that  the 
name  of  England  inspired. 

The  people  were  beginning  to  make  themselves 
heard ;  in  a  dim  way  they  were  beginning  to  appre 
ciate  their  own  strength  that  ninety  years  later 
manifested  itself  when  they  sent  their  sovereign  to 
the  block.  Protestantism  had  taken  deep  hold  of 
the  English  people,  and  it  grew  with  Catholic  oppo 
sition  that  saw  in  a  reformed  England  a  menace  to 
the  political  supremacy  of  the  Pope.  Henry  VIII 
assumed  the  title  of  Defender  of  the  Faith  for  polit 
ical  rather  than  religious  reasons  and  for  the  in 
crease  of  his  authority  with  his  own  subjects;  the 
motive  being  not  unlike  that  which  influenced 
Queen  Victoria  to  add  to  her  other  titles  that  of 
Empress  of  India.  With  Elizabeth  it  was  differ 
ent.  No  sooner  had  she  taken  her  seat  on  the 
throne  than  her  right  to  it  was  challenged  by  the 
Pope;  when  she  declared  herself  a  Protestant,  to 
satisfy  the  conscience  of  a  majority  of  her  subjects, 
the  Pope  issued  a  bull  of  excommunication,  de 
clared  the  throne  vacant,  and  released  the  people 
of  England  from  allegiance  to  their  sovereign.  It 
was  the  one  thing  needed  to  make  Protestantism  a 
political  force.  Catholic  nobles  raised  the  standard 
of  rebellion,  plots  to  assassinate  the  queen  were 


DEMOCRACY  119 

traced  to  the  Catholics,  and  it  was  the  alleged  com 
plicity  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  in  one  of  these  plots 
that  finally  gave  Elizabeth  the  pretext  to  send  her 
rival  to  the  scaffold.  As  the  last  desperate  effort 
of  the  Pope  to  make  Elizabeth  bend  to  his  will  and 
restore  the  old  faith  in  England,  there  occurred 
that  most  picturesque  and  glorious  sea  fight  to 
prove  the  valor  of  Englishmen,— 

"  When  that  great  fleet  invincible 

Against  her  bore  in  vain 
The  richest  spoils  of  Mexico, 
The  stoutest  hearts  of  Spain." 

The  Invincible  Armada  was  sent  forth  by  Spain 
in  the  hope  not  only  that  it  would  destroy  England's 
command  of  the  seas,  but  with  England's  ships 
flung  to  destruction  and  England  crushed  and 
humiliated  and  her  shores  defenseless,  the  Catholics 
would  rise,  Elizabeth  would  be  deposed,  and  the 
Holy  Inquisition  would  engage  in  its  pious  work  of 
teaching  the  love  of  Christ  with  the  rack  and  the 
fagot. 

Medina  Sidonia's  defeat  was  one  of  the  turning- 
points  in  history.  It  is  a  fascinating  speculation 
to  theorize  on  what  might  have  happened  if  at 
one  of  those  critical  historical  junctures  defeat 
had  been  turned  into  victory ;  if  a  grain  of  sand  had 
fallen  into  the  machinery  of  fate  and  brought  des 
tiny  to  a  standstill.  It  is  easy  enough  to  grasp  what 
the  consequences  would  have  been  had  Howard  and 
Drake  been  defeated  in  the  Channel,  and  if  the 


120          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Spaniards  and  not  the  English  had  made  that  day 
their  triumph.  But  in  the  English  victory  was 
something  more  than  a  victorious  battle;  it  had 
deeper  and  far  more  enduring  consequences.  It 
made  Protestantism  a  living,  vital  force  to  safeguard 
the  liberties  of  England  against  the  menace  of 
Romanism ;  it  caused  Romanism  to  be  looked  upon 
as  a  threatening  foe  always  to  be  guarded  against. 
It  is  necessary  to  refer  only  incidentally  to  similar 
causes  on  the  Continent  that  deepened  the  convic 
tion  of  English  Protestants.  The  massacre  of  the 
Protestants  in  France  on  Saint  Bartholomew's  Day 
and  the  unspeakable  cruelties  practiced  by  the  Duke 
of  Alva  in  the  Spanish  war  against  the  Netherlands, 
in  which  he  boasted  that  exclusive  of  those  who 
fell  in  battle,  siege,  and  massacre,  he  had  executed 
eighteen  thousand  six  hundred  heretics  and  traitors,1 
aroused  the  horror  and  pity  of  their  English  co 
religionists  and  strengthened  their  resolve  to  yield 
nothing  to  Rome  and  to  die  in  defense  of  the  faith 
as  Frenchmen  and  Dutchmen  had  done.  Both  from 
France  and  the  Netherlands  came  refugees  seeking 
an  asylum  in  England,  whose  recital  of  the  cruelties 
they  had  suffered  and  the  persecution  they  had  en 
dured  for  the  sake  of  conscience  made  the  character 
of  the  English  Protestant  more  militant  and  more 
than  ever  determined  to  revenge  himself  on  his 
oppressors ;  more  convinced  that  death  were  sweeter 

1  Campbell:  The  Puritan  in  Holland,  England,  and  America,  vol.  i, 
p.  212. 


DEMOCRACY  121 

than  life  in  the  iron  grip  of  Rome;  better  an  end 
with  terror  than  terror  without  end.  It  is  interesting 
as  noting  that  constant  revolution  of  the  wheel  of 
history  and  social  progress  to  which  I  have  referred 
in  a  previous  chapter,  that  these  Dutch  refugees, 
driven  by  persecution  from  their  native  land,  fled  to 
England,  where  they  settled  in  the  eastern  coun 
ties,  and  a  few  years  later,  when  Englishmen,  to 
escape  religious  persecution,  fled  from  England  to 
Holland,  the  migration  began  in  the  eastern  coun 
ties,  and  it  was  from  these  counties  there  went 
forth  the  first  settlers  of  New  England. 

And  now  the  great  power  of  the  printed  word 
was  exercising  its  influence.  Few  books  have 
so  swayed  a  nation  as  Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs, 
which  told  with  all  the  direct  force  of  Elizabethan 
English  how  men  had  died  under  the  hand  of  the 
torturer  rather  than  renounce  their  faith.  By  order 
of  Queen  Elizabeth  a  copy  was  placed  in  every 
parish  church,  and  the  people  read  it  and  were 
moved  by  the  pity  and  the  horror  of  that  grim  tale 
of  religion  run  mad.  It  was  a  time  when  the 
Bible  was  much  read;  it  was  a  day  when  there 
were  no  newspapers  and  no  circulating  libraries, 
when  books  were  rare  and  expensive,  and  when  the 
common  people  read  the  Bible  because  it  was  the 
only  literature  of  which  they  knew.  One  does  not 
have  to  be  a  great  scholar  to  understand  the  simple 
and  short  words  in  which  the  Bible  is  written,  or  to 
be  thrilled  by  the  melodious  beauty  of  its  matchless 


THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

diction ;  and  even  the  poorest  intellect  can  grasp  its 
great  lesson  of  love  and  sacrifice  and  duty.  If  there 
is  one  lesson  more  than  another  that  the  Bible 
teaches,  it  is  the  duty  of  man  to  resist  oppression,  to 
count  suffering  as  naught  in  defense  of  the  right, 
to  cast  down  idols  and  drive  forth  those  who  bend 
the  knee  to  Baal.  The  Bible  left  its  impress  upon 
the  English.  It  moulded  their  thought  as  it  influ 
enced  their  actions,  it  colored  the  language  and 
found  its  expression  in  the  common  talk  of  the 
people.  In  piecing  together  the  causes  that  pro 
duced  Puritanism,  much  weight  must  be  given  to 
the  deep  knowledge  the  English  people  had  of  their 
Bible  and  the  hold  it  exercised  over  them. 

"The  Bible  was  as  yet,"  Green  says  in  his  pe 
culiarly  vivid  style,  "the  one  book  which  was 
familiar  to  every  Englishman;  and  everywhere  its 
words,  as  they  fell  on  ears  which  custom  had  not 
deadened  to  their  force  and  beauty,  kindled  a 
startling  enthusiasm.  The  whole  moral  effect  which 
is  produced  nowadays  by  the  religious  newspaper, 
the  tract,  the  essay,  the  missionary  report,  the  ser 
mon,  was  then  produced  by  the  Bible  alone;  and 
its  effect  in  this  way,  however  dispassionately  we 
examine  rt,  was  simply  amazing.  The  whole  nation 
became  a  church." l  And  in  another  striking  pass 
age  he  says,  "the  mighty  strife  of  good  and  evil 
within  the  soul  itself  which  had  overawed  the  im 
agination  of  dramatist  and  poet  became  the  one 

1  Green:  A  History  of  the  English  People,  vol.  vi,  pp.  190-191. 


DEMOCRACY  123 

spiritual  conception  in  the  mind  of  the  Puritan. 
Religion  had  to  do  not  with  churches,  but  with  the 
individual  soul.  It  was  each  Christian  man  who 
held  in  his  power  the  issues  of  life  and  death.  It 
was  in  each  Christian  conscience  that  the  strife  was 
waged  between  heaven  and  hell.  Not  as  one  of  a 
body,  but  as  a  single  soul,  could  each  Christian 
claim  his  part  in  the  mystery  of  redemption." 

While  Calvinism  led  to  democracy,  which  in  its 
spirit  is  the  merging  of  the  individual  in  the 
mass,  contradictorily  it  produced  an  intense  in 
dividualism,  the  like  of  which  the  world  had 
never  before  known.  All  other  religions,  the  Cath 
olic  religion  especially,  either  shifted  the  burden 
from  the  individual  to  the  mass,  or  else  made  it 
possible  for  the  individual  to  relieve  himself  of  the 
weight  of  sin  by  sharing  it  with  the  Church.  Calvin 
ism  offered  no  such  hope.  The  Calvinist  himself 
must  make  his  peace  with  God  and  his  own  con 
science  without  an  intercessory  mediary.  He  fought 
alwrays  with  the  powers  of  darkness  in  single  com 
bat,  and  it  requires  more  courage  to  fight  alone 
than  with  the  exhilaration  that  comes  from  touching 
shoulders  in  the  ranks.  Calvinism  has  had  much 
to  do  in  producing  the  individualistic  nature  of  the 
American,  even  among  Americans  who  subscribed 
not  to  the  doctrines  of  Calvin.  It  laid  the  founda 
tion  of  American  character  in  the  first  days  of 
America,  and  by  a  natural  development  the  social 
influence  of  Calvinism  became  part  of  the  temper 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  the  American  people  when  the  religious  side  of 
Calvinism  had  expended  its  force.  To  Jefferson 
and  Franklin  and  Charles  Carroll  —  one  mentions 
at  random  merely  a  few  of  the  signers  of  the  Decla 
ration  of  Independence — Calvinism  meant  nothing, 
but  the  spirit  which  it  created,  the  passionate  belief 
in  the  individuality  of  man,  was  the  legacy  of  the 
Puritanism  that  had  descended  to  them  from  the 
settlers  of  Massachusetts  Bay 

"  By  making  man  sole  sponsor  of  himself.'* 


CHAPTER  IX 

PURITANISM   BECOMES   A   POLITICAL   FORCE 

ALTHOUGH  Elizabeth  was  a  Protestant,  the  Church 
was  still  filled  with  the  practices  of  Rome,  and  as 
the  Pope  regarded  himself  as  the  spiritual  head  of  the 
Catholic  world,  so  Elizabeth  constituted  herself 
the  head  of  the  Church  and  would  permit  no  inter 
ference  in  its  direction  by  her  subjects.  Elizabeth 
understood  the  temper  of  her  people  better  than  did 
her  successor,  James  I,  and  had  more  tact  than  to 
put  into  words  what  he  expressed,—  "  as  it  is  atheism 
and  blasphemy  to  dispute  what  God  can  do ;  so  it  is 
presumption  and  a  high  contempt  in  a  subject  to 
dispute  \vhat  a  king  can  do,"  -  but  she  was  fully 
as  strong  in  her  faith  in  the  divine  right  and  om 
nipotence  of  kings.  This  was  abhorrent  to  the 
reformers,  who  wished  to  see  the  Church  entirely  di 
vorced  from  Rome.  They  objected  to  the  use  of  the 
sign  of  the  cross  in  baptism,  of  the  ring  in  marriage, 
of  bowing  at  the  name  of  Jesus,  of  the  use  of  certain 
vestments;  they  demanded  a  more  strict  observ 
ance  of  the  Sabbath.  The  Church  had  fallen  into 
a  low  estate  and  many  of  its  ministers  were  un 
worthy  to  be  its  servants.  In  1571  the  reformers 
presented  a  petition  to  the  queen  alleging  these 
grievances :  — 


126          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

"  Great  numbers  are  admitted  ministers  that  are 
infamous  in  their  lives,  and  among  those  that 
are  of  ability  their  gifts  in  many  places  are  useless 
by  reason  of  pluralities  and  non-residency,  whereby 
infinite  numbers  of  your  majesty's  subjects  are 
like  to  perish  for  lack  of  knowledge.  By  means  of 
this,  together  with  the  common  blasphemy  of  the 
Lord's  name,  the  most  wicked  licentiousness  of 
life,  the  abuse  of  excommunication,  the  commu 
tation  of  penance,  the  great  number  of  atheists, 
schismatics  daily  springing  up,  and  the  increase  of 
papists,  the  Protestant  religion  is  in  imminent 
peril."1  Another  petition  complained  that  the  min 
isters  who  were  competent  had  been  silenced  for 
non-conformity,  and  that  such  as  were  left  were 
unfit  for  the  office,  "having  been  either  popish 
priests,  or  shiftless  men  thrust  in  upon  the  ministry 
when  they  knew  not  how  to  live,  —  serving  men, 
and  the  basest  of  all  sorts,  men  of  no  gifts.  So  they 
are  of  no  common  honesty,  rioters,  dicers,  drunk 
ards,  and  such  like,  of  offensive  lives." 2 

But  Elizabeth,  as  Campbell  points  out,  was 
unmoved.  She  did  not  believe  in  freedom  of  speech 
on  any  subject.  She  was  the  head  of  the  Church, 
and  it  was  her  province  alone  to  decide  such  ques 
tions  and  not  to  have  them  decided  for  her  by  Par 
liament.  As  the  law  prohibited  a  Catholic  from 
sitting  in  the  House  of  Commons,  the  Puritans  were 

1  Campbell :  The  Puritan  in  England,  Holland,  and  America,  vol.  i,  p.  466. 
3  Byington :  The  Puritan  in  England  and  New  England,  p.  53. 


PURITANISM  A  POLITICAL  FORCE   127 

in  a  majority  in  that  body  during  the  reign  of 
Elizabeth,  but  the  power  of  the  Crown  was  greater 
even  than  that  of  the  Commons.  The  independence 
of  members  was  stifled  by  bribe  and  imprisonment, 
and  legislation  was  throttled  by  the  lords  spiritual 
and  temporal.  Reforms  which  the  people  demanded, 
the  queen,  by  the  exercise  of  her  great  power,  was 
able  to  prevent. 

Unconsciously  a  religious  movement  was  now 
about  to  become  a  great  popular  movement  in 
protest  against  the  arbitrary  exercise  of  power  by 
the  sovereign.  The  word  "unconsciously"  is  used 
with  deliberation,  for  the  great  historical  move 
ments  in  the  life  of  a  nation  take  hold  of  a  people 
long  before  they  are  discerned;  they  exercise  their 
influence  imperceptibly  and  without  any  external 
indication  of  the  change  of  character  that  has 
taken  place.  Sometimes  a  people  flash  into  revolt  or 
rebellion  with  as  little  warning  as  a  volcano  throws 
out  its  molten  lava,  and  in  the  one  case  as  in  the 
other  the  damage  may  be  swift  and  terrible;  but 
seldom  is  the  damage  so  great  that  it  cannot  be 
repaired  by  time.  The  agencies  that  change  the 
character  of  a  race  are  as  gradual  and  as  unper- 
ceived  as  the  conversion  of  wood  and  swamp  land 
into  coal,  hidden  for  centuries  and  then  changing 
the  destinies  of  mankind. 

The  Church,  not  any  particular  sect,  but  the 
Church  as  an  institution,  has  always  been  an  aris 
tocratic  fellowship.  Professing  the  principles  of 


128          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

equality,  recognizing  the  universality  of  man,  it 
has  depended  for  its  existence  upon  caste.  Popes 
and  sovereigns,  cardinals  and  bishops,  priests  and 
pastors,  constitute  the  hierarchy  of  the  Church,  ele 
vated  according  to  their  degree  over  the  heads  of 
the  masses  to  whom  they  minister.  In  this  is  to  be 
found  one  of  the  secrets  of  the  perpetuation  of  the 
Church  and  its  power,  for  man  needs  a  master,  and 
men  are  willing  to  obey  those  set  over  them  until 
the  pressure  from  above  becomes  too  severe. 

The  English,  Campbell  says,  are  little  influenced 
by  theories;  they  respect  hard  facts  and  not  ideas; 
and  Boutmy's  deduction  is  that  the  Englishman 
"has  no  time  to  follow  vain  phantoms;  they  are  too 
far  removed  from  earth,  too  alien  to  life  here  below, 
to  its  conditions  and  necessities."  In  other  words, 
the  Englishman  is  not  metaphysical  like  the  Ger 
man,  nor  imaginative  like  the  Latin,  and  what  is 
known  as  the  deep-rooted  conservatism  of  the  Eng 
lish  character  is  simply  an  acceptance  of  the  es 
tablished  order  —  the  facts  of  society  —  and  a 
reluctance  to  indulge  in  experiments  that  may 
overturn  the  established  order;  and  it  is  only  when 
that  order  is  threatened,  when  liberty  is  in  danger 
or  the  freedom  of  conscience  is  denied,  that  he  can 
be  induced  to  offer  resistance.  Compare,  for  in 
stance,  the  English  and  French  revolutions.  The 
English  had  a  definite  purpose  to  accomplish.  The 
rights  of  the  people,  rights  which  had  been  theirs 
from  time  immemorial  and  had  become  indefeasi- 


PURITANISM  A  POLITICAL  FORCE  129 

ble  and  constituted  the  basis  on  which  society  was 
organized,  were  menaced  by  Charles  I,  who  at 
tempted  to  subvert  the  Commons  and  magnify  the 
power  of  the  Crown.  There  was  only  one  thing 
to  do,  and  that  was  to  resist  encroachment,  then  to 
fight  against  it,  finally  to  remove  the  sovereign 
whose  existence  threatened  the  destruction  of 
society.  It  was  all  done  in  a  grim,  stolid,  rather 
matter-of-fact  way,  with  as  little  noise  and  dis 
turbance  as  possible.  It  was  reform  from  within 
and  not  from  without;  it  was  not  necessary  to  over 
throw  the  social  order  to  correct  abuses ;  it  was  folly 
to  burn  down  the  mansion  to  purify  a  single  room. 
In  England  the  revolution  was  not  accompanied  by 
a  reign  of  terror,  and  an  incautious  word  did  not 
sign  a  death  warrant.  Now,  the  French  are  differ 
ently  constituted,  and  they  resisted  oppression  and 
brought  their  king  to  the  guillotine  in  quite  another 
fashion.  They  must  needs  do  their  killing  to  the 
accompaniment  of  the  sham  philosophy  of  the 
encyclopaedists,  to  "deluges  of  frantic  Sansculot- 
ism,"  as  Carlyle  says;  they  prate  much  of  liberty 
and  equality,  and  they  wear  the  bonnet  rouge  as 
symbolic  of  that  liberty  upon  which  they  trampled. 
In  the  reign  of  Elizabeth  those  Englishmen  who 
had  broken  away  from  the  Church  of  Rome  were 
Calvinistic  in  their  theology  —  and  Calvin  has  been 
described  as  "Half  Old  Testament  prophet,  half 
Republican  demagogue  "  -  but  still  aristocratic  in 
their  church  system.  The  bench  of  bishops,  created 


130          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

by  the  king,  naturally  believed  in  the  divine  right 
of  kings  and  preached  obedience  and  submission 
to  the  spiritual  and  temporal  head  of  the  Church. 
The  Reformation  had  wrought  many  changes  in  the 
outward  observance  of  religion  and  religious  forms, 
but  it  had  left  untouched  the  great  system  of  caste 
in  the  Church.  No  stronger  incentive  than  that 
was  needed  to  make  men  imbued  with  the  tenets  of 
Calvinism  unconsciously  drift  toward  democracy. 
Calvinism  was  in  essence  democracy.  In  the 
Parliamentary  party  there  were  men  who  were  in 
religion  Independents,  who  were,  "to  use  the  kin 
dred  phrase  of  our  own  time,  radicals,"  as  Macaulay 
says.1  "  Great  as  were  the  faults  of  Puritanism,  it 
may  fairly  claim  to  be  the  first  political  system 
which  recognized  the  grandeur  of  the  people  as  a 
whole."  2  Green  dwells  on  "  the  new  conception  of 
social  equality"  that  was  the  product  of  Puritanism 
and  shows  how  it  led  to  democracy.  "Their  com 
mon  call,  their  common  brotherhood  in  Christ, 
annihilated  in  the  minds  of  the  Puritans  that  over 
powering  sense  of  social  distinction  which  charac 
terized  the  age  of  Elizabeth.  The  meanest  peasant 
felt  himself  ennobled  as  a  child  of  God.  The 
proudest  noble  recognized  a  spiritual  equality  in 
the  poorest  'saint.'"3  Thus  it  will  be  seen  that 
democracy  did  not  spring  from  the  virgin  soil  of 

1  Macaulay:  History  of  England,  vol.  i,  p.  58. 

2  Green:  History  of  the  English  People,  vol.  vii,  p.  150. 

3  Green:  A  Short  History  of  the  English  People,  p.  451. 


PURITANISM  A  POLITICAL  FORCE  131 

Massachusetts ;  the  seed  had  been  sown  on  English 
ground,  and  it  brought  forth  its  harvest  long  before 
that  great  hegira  which  gave  a  new  impulse  to 
individualism. 

The  growth  of  Protestantism,  of  Calvinism  es 
pecially,  made  the  masses  appreciate  their  power. 
"For  the  first  time  in  British  history,  the  common 
people  had  become  a  power  in  the  land.  They 
cared  nothing  for  their  leaders  and  little  for  their 
king.  They  worshiped  a  heavenly  monarch,  so 
far  above  all  earthly  rulers  that  to  them  terrestrial 
potentates  seemed  puppets.  Narrow-minded  these 
men  were,  of  course,  ignorant,  and  like  their 
preachers,  superstitious,  rude  in  manner,  often  bru 
tal  in  action."1  But  they  were  no  more  sensible  of 
their  power  at  first  than  the  growing,  healthy  child 
knows  his  strength,  the  full  realization  of  which 
comes  to  him  only  when  in  a  moment  of  resistance 
against  the  authorities  of  the  home  he  rebels  and 
finds  he  has  that  within  him  that  makes  him  feared. 
Under  the  influence  of  religion  the  people  of  Eng 
land  had  been  slowly  acquiring  moral  strength, 
courage,  purpose,  the  importance  of  which  the  world 
was  first  to  see  on  a  new  continent  where  there 
was  space  to  build  new  political  institutions,  where 
the  ground  was  unencumbered  with  the  debris  of 
institutions  become  obsolete,  and  where  the  founda 
tions  could  be  laid  so  deep  that  neither  the  storm 
of  passion  nor  the  folly  of  man  could  destroy  them. 

;  Campbell:  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  12. 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   AMERICAN   HAS   ALWAYS   BEEN   A   REBEL 

IN  previous  chapters  I  have  shown  how  the  charac 
ter  of  the  English  people  had  been  slowly  chang 
ing,  developing,  and  broadening  from  the  time  of 
the  Reformation  until  the  Commonwealth.  The 
transition  was  logical.  Serfdom  had  given  way 
to  freedom,  the  power  of  the  barons  had  been  cur 
tailed  until  at  last  the  feudal  system  was  broken 
down;  as  the  power  of  the  nobles  declined  that  of 
the  people  rose,  and  with  every  fresh  extension  of 
their  liberties  they  demanded  still  more.  Long  had 
they  lain  under  the  thrall  of  the  Church,  and  long 
had  they  felt  an  insistent  desire  to  escape  from  it 
and  to  come  into  their  spiritual  and  moral  freedom, 
which  at  last  they  won  because  they  had  the  courage 
to  fight  for  it. 

In  an  age  that  has  long  ceased  to  believe  in 
miracles  one  miracle  has  still  survived,  and  with 
an  industry  worthy  to  be  devoted  to  better  things 
teachers  have  endeavored  to  impress  on  their  stu 
dents  a  belief  in  the  miraculous.  A  very  simple 
explanation  has  been  offered  for  the  genesis  of  Amer 
ican  institutions,  those  institutions  that  Campbell, 
in  his  intense  desire  to  trace  back  to  Rome  and  to 
Holland,  to  Scotland  and  to  Spain,  to  anywhere,  in 


THE  AMERICAN  A  REBEL         133 

fact,  except  to  England,  so  curiously  terms  "  un-Eng 
lish."  In  some  mysterious  way  those  seers  of  New 
England  drew  their  inspiration  from  the  air,  and 
like  Jonah's  gourd  their  civilization  sprang  up  over 
night.  Never  has  the  world  witnessed  a  miracle 
more  wonderful  than  this.  The  carpenters  and  the 
coopers,  the  fustian-workers  and  the  hatters,  the 
smiths  and  the  wool-carders,1  these  plain  and  simple 
folk  wrho  were  the  passengers  on  the  Mayflower, 
who  in  England  were  content  to  pursue  their  humble 
callings  and  had  given  no  evidence  that  they  were 
superior  in  intellect  to  their  fellow  workers,  in  their 
passage  across  the  ocean  had  been  transformed  and 
become  endowed  with  the  gift  of  genius.  If  so,  the 
voyage  of  Jason  and  his  fellow  Argonauts  was  no 
more  marvelous  than  this. 

But  alluring  as  it  would  be  to  the  imagination  to 
think  that  at  the  moment  when  the  sails  of  the 
Mayflower  were  furled  the  law  of  causation  ceased 
and  like  the  magnetic  needle  at  the  North  Pole  no 
longer  pointed  to  the  true  north,  there  is  neither 
justification  nor  reason  for  dismissing  the  truth  to 
seek  an  explanation  in  the  fantastic.  The  causes 
are  quite  simple  and  perfectly  rational.  They  are 
to  be  found  close  at  hand  if  the  trouble  is  taken 

1  Ames :  The  May-Flower  and  her  Log,  p.  194.  Ames  gives  this  list  of  the 
vocations  of  adults  so  far  as  known  (except  wives,  who  are  presumed  house 
keepers  for  their  husbands):  Carpenters,  2;  Cooper,  1;  Fustian-worker  and 
silk-dyer,  1 ;  Hatter,  1 ;  Lay  Reader,  1 ;  Lady's-maid,  1 ;  Merchant,  1 ;  Physi 
cian,  1;  Printers  and  publishers,  2;  Seamen,  4;  Servants  (adults),  10;  Smith, 
1;  Soldier,  1;  Tailor,  1;  Tradesmen,  2;  Wool-carder,  1. 


134  THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

to  search  for  them.  Nor  do  we  have  to  go  back  to 
Rome,  which  has  been  the  fad  of  some  writers,  to 
find  there  the  inspiration  for  American  institutions, 
except  as  Rome  colored  English  civilization.  And 
it  is  equally  absurd  to  think  that  the  short  time 
spent  by  the  Separatists  in  Holland  so  altered  their 
whole  concept  of  life  that  they  cast  off  the  influences 
of  English  descent  and  training  and  traditions  and 
became  Dutch  in  spirit  and  in  everything  else  except 
in  language.  That  were  a  miracle  second  only  to 
the  first  and  greater  phenomenon.  "The  whole 
world  was  their  quarry,  and  all  the  past  their 
architects."  Most  accounts  of  the  origin  of  Ameri 
can  institutions  have  been  so  colored  by  the  preju 
dices  of  their  writers  that  although  they  conscien 
tiously  endeavored  to  write  history  they  succeeded 
in  producing  hagiology,  which  may  be  entertaining 
reading,  but  is  never  accurate. 

It  is  worth  noting  here  that  although  the  Dutch 
planted  New  York,  and  the  Swedes  Delaware,  and 
the  Spanish  Florida,  and  the  French  Louisiana; "  the 
Dutch,  the  French,  and  the  English  made  a  simul 
taneous  sowing  of  the  great  struggle  for  commercial 
and  political  supremacy  in  North  America";  and 
since  that  day  the  Irish,  the  Germans,  the  Italians, 
the  Jews,  the  Scandinavians  have  flowed  in  never- 
ending  stream  to  swell  the  flood  of  the  American 
race,  they  have  all  been  absorbed  into  and  have 
not  absorbed  the  English.  The  law,  the  speech,  the 
institutions  of  America  are  English,  and  modified 


THE  AMERICAN  A  REBEL         135 

only  by  conditions  peculiarly  American.  Neither 
the  Dutch  nor  the  French  nor  the  Spanish  left 
a  single  enduring  law  nor  a  single  institution  that 
has  survived.1  The  immigrant  since  their  time  has 
brought  with  him  his  own  customs,  and  he  has 
cast  them  off  as  he  discarded  the  garments  of  the 
Fatherland  when  with  American  money  he  purchased 
American  clothes.  Whence  came  this  extraordinary 
power  of  assimilation  ?  We  cannot  answer  that 
question  now;  it  will  answer  itself  in  the  succeed 
ing  pages  as  we  trace  the  growth  of  American 
nationality. 

No,  the  Puritan  —  for  the  Pilgrim  need  be  only 
incidentally  considered  in  the  course  of  this  investi 
gation —  came  to  Massachusetts  an  Englishman, 
a  rebel  at  heart,  a  protagonist  to  be  given  for  the 
first  time  full  scope  for  the  display  of  his  powers,  and 
a  man  of  profound  religious  conviction  who  was  to 
set  up  the  theocracy  in  which  he  believed  and  which 
had  been  denied  him  in  England.  The  Massachu 
setts  man  was  not  an  American,  for  America  in  the 
early  part  of  the  seventeenth  century  was  a  geo 
graphical  expression  and  not  a  political  entity. 

A  race  is  not  the  product  of  to-day  or  yesterday ; 
it  is  the  result  of  all  the  influences  that  have  made 
it.  In  England  those  influences  had  been  at  work 
for  a  hundred  years  before  the  Puritan  set  foot 
on  American  soil.  The  Puritan  left  England  with 

1  That  in  Louisiana  the  code  is  based  upon  the  Spanish  law  and  the 
Code  Napoleon  does  not  contradict  the  general  assertion. 


136          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

bitterness  in  his  heart  not  un tinged  with  regret;  the 
voyage  across  the  Atlantic  changed  him  not  in 
the  slightest,  and  he  came  to  his  new  home  full  of 
courage  but  also  full  of  determination,  still  ready 
to  rebel  against  authority  that  should  attempt  to 
throttle  his  liberty.  The  American  has  always  been 
a  rebel.  He  is  a  living  protest.  His  existence  is  a 
protest  against  usurped  authority.  To  a  rebel 
fighting  is  second  nature.  The  American  has  al 
ways  fought,  against  nature,  against  man,  against 
government  when  that  government  sought  to  op 
press  him.  That  was  the  moral  attitude  of  the 
Puritan.  It  displayed  itself  as  early  as  1635,  when 
Massachusetts  contained  a  mere  handful  of  strug 
gling  colonists.  The  fear  that  Charles  I  would  seek 
to  exercise  arbitrary  power  led  them  to  prepare  to 
resist  the  Crown.  They  fortified  Boston  Harbor, 
and  the  militia  was  placed  on  a  war  footing.  The 
spirit  of  1776  did  not  suddenly  flash  into  life.  It 
was  born  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  before. 

A  digression  for  a  moment  is  necessary.  In  read 
ing  history  backward  the  mind  overleaps  the  ages. 
Certain  great  events  in  the  life  of  races  or  nations 
stand  out  so  prominently  that  they  cannot  be 
overlooked,  but  the  causes  that  produced  them 
are  often  obscure  and  their  significance  is  hidden. 
Many  writers  have  found  it  convenient  to  ascribe 
the  beginning  of  Americanism  to  the  Declaration 
of  Independence,  as  if  that  had  made  articulate  an 
invertebrate  people.  Now  that  were  absurd.  The 


THE   AMERICAN  A  REBEL          137 

Declaration  of  Independence  was  not  cause  but 
effect.  "  It  was  only  the  first  unanswerable  asser 
tion  that  this  new  people  had  come  into  existence."  l 
The  defiance  of  England  by  Jefferson  and  Hancock 
and  Franklin  and  the  other  men  who  appended 
their  signatures  to  the  great  charter  gained  no 
strength  from  their  written  declaration.  This  defi 
ance  had  for  years  been  slowly  growing.  It  fol 
lowed,  it  did  not  precede,  the  liberty  that  Patrick 
Henry  so  passionately  invoked.  Long  before  the 
parchment  was  made  on  which  the  Declaration  of 
Independence  was  written,  long  years  before  that 
shot  was  fired  which  echoed  in  the  heart  of  freedom, 
long  before  the  guns  of  Lexington  and  Concord 
spoke,  men  had  heard  the  voice  that  called  them  to 
resist.  Lexington  and  Concord  were  the  outward 
and  visible  signs  of  the  spiritual  teachings  that 
began  in  England  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  ear 
lier,  that  buried  their  roots  deep  in  the  soil  of  New 
England,  and  were  fed  by  the  immanent  conviction 
in  the  divine  inspiration,  and  a  profound  belief  that 
there  was  only  one  law  —  the  law  of  God  —  and 
that  as  God  had  taught  His  people  to  resist  oppres 
sion,  so  it  was  the  duty  of  those  who  would  walk 
in  the  light  of  His  countenance  to  hearken  to  the 
voice  of  Sinai. 

The  beginning  of  America  we  may  really  date  to 
1604.  In  that  year  met  the  first  Parliament  of 
James  I,  in  which  the  Puritans  had  a  majority; 

1  Wendell:  Liberty,  Union,  and  Democracy,  p.  81. 


138          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  one  of  the  first  acts  of  the  House  of  Com 
mons  was  to  enact  measures  to  redress  certain 
ecclesiastical  grievances,  which  the  Lords,  backed 
by  James,  rejected.  This  put  the  Commons  on 
their  mettle,  and  they  boldly  told  the  king  that  he 
had  no  more  power  to  change  religion  than  he  had 
to  alter  any  laws  without  the  consent  of  Parliament. 
James,  with  all  the  obstinacy  and  short-sight 
edness  of  the  Stuarts,  would  listen  to  no  advice; 
reformers  were  declared  guilty  of  sedition  and 
rebellion  and  punished;  the  Church  enunciated 
anew  the  doctrine  of  the  divine  right  of  kings  and 
the  duty  of  obedience  to  those  placed  in  authority. 
And  observe  again  how  the  great  wheel  of  life  for 
ever  revolves  and  the  seeming  impossibility  of  men 
to  profit  by  the  experience  of  the  past.  The  contest 
between  James  I  and  his  people  ought  to  have  been 
a  warning  to  Charles  I,  but  it  went  unheeded,  and 
Charles  lost  his  head,  just  as  George  III,  for  the 
same  reason,  lost  his  American  colonies.  Had  the 
grievances  of  which  the  Puritans  complained  been 
redressed  by  James,  there  would,  in  all  probability, 
have  been  no  civil  war,  no  flight  to  Holland 
and  thence  to  America,  no  tragedy  at  Whitehall; 
America  would  have  been  settled  by  Englishmen, 
but  they  would,  one  is  inclined  to  believe,  have 
remained  Englishmen.  It  was  the  stupidity  and 
vanity  of  an  obstinate  and  narrow  man  that  created 
a  race. 

The  purpose  of  the  Puritan  in  leaving  England 


THE  AMERICAN  A  REBEL        139 

and  coming  to  Massachusetts  was  to  create  a  theo 
cratic  state  which,  as  Fiske  says,  should  be,  under 
the  New  Testament  dispensation,  all  that  the  theo 
cracy  of  Moses  and  Joshua  and  Samuel  had  been 
to  the  Jews  in  Old  Testament  days.1  "It  was  one 
great  design  of  the  first  planters  of  the  Massachu 
setts  colony  to  obtain  for  themselves  and  their  pos 
terity  the  liberty  of  worshiping  God  in  such  manner 
as  appeared  to  them  to  be  most  agreeable  to  the 
sacred  scriptures." 2  They  came  with  that  distinct 
purpose,  and  it  was  one  of  the  causes  that  made 
them  rebel  at  heart  from  the  beginning.  They  were 
prepared  to  render  allegiance  to  their  Heavenly 
King,  but  they  were  in  no  mood  tamely  to  submit 
to  the  tyranny  of  Stuart  monarchs.  They  had  no 
use  for  man-made  constitutions,  or  for  experiments 
in  government ;  to  those  speculations  that  later  were 
so  dear  to  the  French  philosophers  they  gave  no 
countenance.  Their  way  lay  straight  before  them. 
The  small  book  that  has  influenced  the  thought 
of  mankind  more  than  all  the  ponderous  tomes  of 
philosopher  and  reformer  was  their  sole  guide.  If 
they  were  in  doubt,  they  had  only  to  look  into  the 
Bible  and  find  all  doubts  removed.  If  there  was 
any  question  beyond  the  finite  capacity  of  man  to 
solve,  they  had  only  to  search  and  find  the  answer 
in  the  Word. 

They   were   not    tolerant   men,    they   were   not 

1  Fiske:  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  146. 
3  Hutchinson:  History  of  New  England,  vol.  i,  p.  417. 


140          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

liberal,  as  we  understand  the  meaning  of  the  term 
in  this  day  of  enlightened  liberality.  They  pur 
posed  no  asylum  for  the  persecuted  of  other  sects. 
They  had  not  made  themselves  exiles,  that  they 
might  prepare  an  arena  where  all  kinds  of  beliefs 
might  disport  themselves.  They  had  come  three 
thousand  miles,  at  a  great  cost  of  money  and  of 
feeling,  that  they  might  here  make  a  better  Eng 
land  according  to  their  own  convictions  of  that 
which  was  true  and  right.1  They  were  fanatics, 
if  you  please,  at  a  time  when  the  world  was  either 
fanatical  or  full  of  scoffing  doubt,  and  it  was  a 
time  when  the  fanatic  was  more  useful  and  played 
a  greater  part  than  the  Laodicean.  They  stand 
accused  of  becoming  more  royalist  than  the  king 
in  their  religious  bigotry,  and  after  having  escaped 
from  persecution  they  persecuted  with  even  greater 
ferocity  those  who  had  the  courage  to  disagree 
with  their  theology.  Those  historians  who  have 
built  on  this  false  premise  must  naturally  reach 
an  erroneous  conclusion  in  their  attempts  to  judge 
the  character  of  the  Puritans,  but  this  error  is 
to  be  attributed  largely  to  the  confusion  of  Pil 
grim  and  Puritan.  The  former  separated  from 
the  Established  Church  because  their  consciences 
led  them  to  a  form  of  worship  that  seemed  more 
in  keeping  with  divine  commandments,  and  they 
could  not,  unless  they  were  hypocrites,  claim  liberty 

1  McKenzie:  Introduction  to  Byington:  The  Puritan  in  England  and 
New  England. 


THE  AMERICAN   A  REBEL         141 

for  themselves  and  deny  it  to  all  others.  They 
asked  religious  liberty,  and  in  equal  measure  they 
were  prepared  to  grant  it.  The  vagaries  of  the 
Quakers  were  to  be  sorrowed  over  rather  than  to 
be  corrected  in  anger.  Although  the  Quakers  fell 
under  the  Pilgrim  lash  just  as  later  they  did  under 
the  Puritan,  and  although  it  was  applied  in  a  spirit 
of  charity  rather  than  vengeance,  it  scarred  naked 
backs  as  much  in  the  one  case  as  in  the  other.  The 
belief  in  witchcraft  was  universal,  and  the  Pilgrims 
were  no  more  superior  to  the  teachings  of  their 
day  than  were  the  Puritans,  but  their  natural 
benevolence  stayed  the  hand  of  the  executioner. 
With  the  Puritan  it  was  different.  He  who  was  not 
of  their  faith  was  an  evil-disposed  person  who  was 
an  enemy  to  the  theocratic  state,  and  there  was  no 
place  for  such  in  the  community.  There  was  no 
more  room  for  heretics  in  Massachusetts  than  there 
was  in  Rome  or  Madrid,  Fiske  says.  It  was  a 
day  of  swift  trial  and  stern  punishment.  The  here 
tic  must  recant  or  die  for  his  heresy.  Heresy  was 
treason,  and  treason  was  death. 

Bear  in  mind  another  fact.  The  Pilgrim  had 
separated  from  the  Church  of  England;  the  Puritan, 
at  the  time  of  his  migration,  when  he  laid  the  foun 
dation  of  empire,  was  a  member  of  the  Church,  and 
he  resented  the  imputation  that  he  was  a  schismatic. 
As  the  shores  of  England  were  fast  receding,  Hig- 
ginson  called  his  little  band  about  him  and  thus 
addressed  them :  — 


142          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

"  We  will  not  say  as  the  Separatists  were  wont  to 
say  at  their  leaving  of  England,  Farewell  Babylon! 
Farewell  Rome!  but  we  will  say,  Farewell,  dear 
England,  farewell,  the  Church  of  God  in  England 
and  all  the  Christian  friends  there.  We  do  not  go 
to  New  England  as  Separatists  from  the  Church  of 
England,  though  we  cannot  but  separate  from  the 
corruptions  of  it;  but  we  go  to  practice  the  positive 
part  of  church  reformation,  and  propagate  the 
Gospel  in  America."  1 

Typical  of  this  same  feeling,  which  finds  its  ex 
pression  in  numerous  addresses  and  records,  is  the 
letter  from  Dudley,  the  deputy  governor  of  Massa 
chusetts,  to  the  Countess  of  Lincoln;  he  writes  in 
February,  1631:- 

"Also,  to  increase  the  heap  of  our  sorrows,  we 
received  advisement  by  letters  from  our  friends  in 
England,  and  by  the  reports  of  those  who  came 
hither  in  this  ship  to  abide  with  us,  (who  were  about 
twenty-six)  that  they  who  went  discontentedly  from 
us  the  last  year,  out  of  their  evil  affections  towards 
us,  have  raised  many  false  and  scandalous  reports 
against  us,  affirming  us  to  be  Brownists  in  religion, 
and  ill  affected  to  our  State  at  home,  and  that  those 
vile  reports  have  won  credit  with  some  who  for 
merly  wished  us  well.  But  we  desire,  and  cannot 
but  hope,  that  wise  and  impartial  men  will  at 
length  consider  that  such  malcontents  have  ever 
pursued  this  manner  of  casting  dirt,  to  make 

1  Bacon:  Genesis  of  the  New  England  Churches,  p.  467. 


THE   AMERICAN   A  REBEL         143 

others  seem  as  foul  as  themselves,  and  that  our 
goodly  friends,  to  whom  we  are  known,  will  not 
easily  believe  that  we  are  so  soon  turned  from  the 
profession  we  so  long  have  made  in  our  native 
country.  .  .  .  We  are  not  like  those  which  have 
dispensation  to  lie;  but  as  we  were  free  enough 
in  Old  England  to  turn  our  insides  outward, 
sometimes  to  our  disadvantage,  very  unlikely  is  it 
that  now,  being  procul  a  fulmine,  we  should  be  so 
unlike  ourselves.  Let  therefore  this  be  sufficient 
for  us  to  say,  and  others  to  hear  in  this  matter."  * 
The  Puritan  has  been  called  a  fanatic,  and  fanatic 
he  undoubtedly  was,  and  yet  his  was  a  fanaticism 
unlike  that  the  world  had  ever  before  known,  and 
therefore  it  produced  results  different  from  other 
religious  persecution.  In  an  attempt  to  make  men 
conform  to  a  particular  creed  or  form  of  worship, 
pope  and  king  had  claimed  divine  authority  which 
men  might  not  challenge,  and  so  long  as  the  creed 
they  preached  was  accepted  they  cared  little  for 
the  sincerity  of  professed  belief.  With  the  Puritan 
it  was  different.  He  would  tolerate  no  mere  lip 
service.  Puritanism,  as  I  shall  show  in  the  next 
chapter,  was  a  polity  as  well  as  a  religion ;  it  was  not 
only  the  life  of  the  people  but  it  was  also  the  life 
of  the  state;  it  was  a  new  trinity  —  the  guide  to 
morality,  the  guide  to  temporal  obedience,  the  guide 
to  the  achievement  of  material  welfare.  Until  the 
time  when  the  Puritans  settled  in  Massachusetts 

1  Force,  vol.  ii,  4.  16. 


144          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

creeds  were  to  be  savagely  defended  and  fought  for, 
but  they  were  always  exotic;  they  were  always 
something  outside  of  men  themselves,  the  meaning 
of  which  men  only  dimly  comprehended. 

"The  passionately  precise  idealism"  of  Calvin 
ism  was  the  basis  of  the  Puritan  character.  His 
theodicy  was  to  him  real.  Forever  tortured  by 
doubt,  forever  striving  to  reach  a  higher  spiritual 
plane,  he  must  forever  be  vainly  searching,  strug 
gling,  asking;  engaged  in  a  perpetual  conflict  with 
himself;  endeavoring  with  all  his  strength  to  over 
throw  the  enemy  and  rise  triumphant  over  sin. 
He  was  always  questioning.  The  Puritan  has  been 
represented  as  a  man  of  little  and  narrow  imagin 
ation,  but  this  misreads  him.  No  man  is  unimag 
inative  whose  whole  life  is  a  spiritual  conflict  such 
as  the  Puritan  wras  always  engaged  in ;  the  struggle 
for  freedom  vividly  awakens  the  imagination.  The 
man  who  accepts  everything  as  fait  accompli,  to 
whom  the  things  of  heaven  and  earth  are  a  finality, 
who  has  never  been  moved  to  question  the  meaning 
of  life  or  the  mystery  of  death,  who  accepts  what 
ever  is,  moves  with  narrowed  vision  and  is  deaf  to 
the  power  of  impression.  The  Puritan's  whole 
training,  his  intense  idealism,  quickened  the  imag 
ination,  for  had  he  not  been  gifted  with  the  divine 
power  of  imagination,  life  would  have  lost  many  of 
its  terrors  and  death  promised  fewer  rewards.1 

1  "  Those  people  believed.  They  never  for  one  instant  questioned"; 
thus  Charles  Francis  Adams  in  Massachusetts,  its  Historians  and  its  History 
(p.  36).  They  believed,  yes;  it  was  inseparable  from  their  lives;  but  they 


THE  AMERICAN  A  REBEL        145 

Puritanism  was  not  a  garment  to  be  hastily 
slipped  into  on  Sunday  and  to  be  forgotten  for  the 
other  six  days  of  the  week.  The  Puritan  wore  his 
religion  at  all  times  as  he  wore  his  leather-lined 
doublet,  for  without  it  he  would  have  stood  ashamed 
in  his  own  nakedness;  and  one  was  as  necessary 
to  him  as  the  other.  Whether  he  worked  or  played, 
whether  he  sat  in  meeting-house  or  in  the  general 
court,  whether  he  tilled  his  fields  or  snatched  up  his 
musket  at  the  sound  of  an  Indian  alarm,  wherever 
he  went  or  whatever  he  did,  he  took  his  creed  with 
him,  for  it  was  the  criterion  of  right  living,  the 
benison  of  divine  grace. 

never  ceased  to  question.  The  difference  between  Puritan  and  Catholic  was 
that  while  both  believed,  the  Catholic  never  questioned,  and  the  Puritan  was 
always  tortured  by  doubt.  The  Catholic  believed  with  faith  sublime,  which 
brought  peace;  the  Puritan  believed,  but  was  never  at  peace  with  himself. 
"I  cannot  imagine  why  the  Holy  Ghost  should  give  Timothy  the  solemnest 
charge,  was  ever  given  Mortal  man,  to  observe  the  rules  he  had  given,  till  the 
coming  of  Christ;  if  new  things  must  be  expected."  —  The  Simple  Cobler 
of  Aggawam  (Force,  vol.  iii,  8).  And  Mather  and  Johnson  and  other 
Puritan  theologues  show  how  this  fear,  this  doubt,  this  longing  to  believe, 
and  yet  always  this  eternal  questioning,  had  possession  of  the  Puritan  mind; 
which  was  at  once  its  weakness  no  less  than  its  strength. 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   BIBLE   THE   PURITAN    CONSTITUTION 

To  the  Puritan  the  ideal  concept  of  society  was 
a  form  of  government  in  which  the  Word  of  God, 
as  exemplified  in  the  Bible,  was  the  law  of  man. 
Grasping  this  basic  truth,  we  see  at  once  where  it 
led  him. 

The  Bible  was  the  Constitution  of  the  Puritan 
State. 

All  society,  civilized  or  uncivilized,  rests  upon 
a  body  of  laws.  Among  an  uncivilized  people,  in  a 
primitive  or  rudimentary  state,  those  laws  are  the 
customs  of  the  tribe  or  the  traditions  of  the  clan.  As 
society  escapes  from  barbarism  and  its  intellectual 
faculties  develop,  customs  and  traditions  are  codi 
fied  into  fundamental  constitutions  and  statutes, 
which  are  either  precisely  defined  or,  by  the  sanc 
tion  of  usage,  become  the  unwritten  law.  In  the 
New  World,  in  his  new  environment,  the  Puritan 
began  his  social  and  political  existence  with  a  writ 
ten  constitution  —  the  Bible.  I  make  no  apologies 
for  reiteration.  It  is  necessary  that  this  should  be 
emphasized  if  its  significance  is  to  be  appreciated 
and  its  consequences  understood.1 

1  "  It  was  then  requested  of  Mr.  Cotton,  that  he  would,  from  the  laws 
wherewith  God  governed  his  ancient  people,  form  an  abstract  of  such  as  were 


THE  PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     147 

Every  nomadic  tribe,  every  clan,  every  people 
from  whom  has  sprung  a  race,  is  not  less  influenced 
by  its  laws  or  customs  than  those  laws  or  customs 
reflect  the  physical  and  mental  state  of  their  crea 
tors;  and  it  is  impossible  to  comprehend  their  view 
of  life  unless  we  have  knowledge  of  the  code  to 
which  they  rendered  obedience.  The  laws  of  Draco 
and  the  laws  of  Solon  typify  two  stages  in  the  life  of 
Athens.  You  cannot  enter  into  the  Athenian  mind 
if  you  are  unable  to  see  why  those  codes  were  en 
acted;  with  that  understanding  the  Athenian  social 
and  moral  philosophy  is  its  own  interpretation. 

No  writer  with  whom  I  am  familiar  has  brought 
the  Bible  in  this  exact  relation  to  the  Puritan.  And 
yet  it  is  fundamental.  It  is  because  of  his  Biblical 
constitution  that  the  Puritan  was  what  he  was.  It  is 
one  of  the  chief  explanations  of  the  difference  in 
character  between  the  Pilgrim  and  the  Puritan.  It 
is  the  reason  why  the  Puritan  made  America  and 
the  Pilgrim  was  merely  an  episode  in  historical  evo 
lution.1 

of  a  moral  and  a  lasting  equity:  which  he  performed  as  acceptably  as  judi 
ciously.  .  .  .  Mr.  Cotton  effectually  recommended  it  unto  them,  that  none 
should  be  electors,  nor  elected  therein,  except  such  as  were  visible  subjects  of 
our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  personally  confederated  in  our  churches.  In  these, 
and  many  other  ways,  he  propounded  unto  them,  an  endeavour  after  a  theo 
cracy,  as  near  as  might  be,  to  that  which  was  the  glory  of  Israel,  the  peculiar 
people."  —  Magnolia,  rol.  i,  p.  243. 

1  An  Abstract  of  the  Lawes  of  New  England  as  they  are  now  Established 
(Force,  vol.  iii,  9),  chapter  i.  Of  Magistrates.  First,  All  Magistrates  are  to 
be  chosen,  First,  By  the  free  Burgesses  (Deut.  i,  13).  Secondly,  Out  of  the 
free  Burgesses  (Deut.  xvii,  15),  and  so  on  throughout,  the  warrant  for  the  law 
being  found  in  Scripture. 


148          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

A  writer  usually  so  careful  as  Pierre  Leroy- 
Beaulieu  falls  into  the  common  error  of  regarding 
Pilgrim  and  Puritan  as  synonymous  and  inter 
changeable  terms.  "From  the  days  of  the  Pilgrim 
fathers,"  he  says,  "who  expatriated  themselves  in 
order  that  they  might  establish  on  the  rude  shores 
of  Massachusetts  a  government  resting  on  the  prin 
ciples  derived  from  the  Bible."  l  But  this  the  Pil 
grim  did  not  do.  He  had  no  purpose  to  found  a 
theocratic  state.  That  was  the  self-appointed  mis 
sion  of  the  Puritan. 

"And  the  elder  Saints  and  Sages  laid  their  pious  framework  right 
By  a  theocratic  instinct  covered  from  the  people's  sight." 

Agreed  as  men  may  be  on  principles,  on  details 
there  will  always  be  a  wide  divergence  of  opinion, 
and  the  greater  their  intellection  the  greater  that 
divergence  will  be.  Nothing  is  more  enticing  to 
flexible  and  subtle  minds  than  to  discuss  the  mean 
ing  of  words  capable  of  more  than  one  construction 
by  ingenious  argument  or  adroit  sophistication,  and 
to  convince  themselves  by  their  arguments  of  the 
correctness  of  their  position  and  the  weakness  of 
that  of  their  opponents.  The  Constitution  of  the 
United  States  has  been  in  existence  for  one  hundred 
and  twenty-five  years,  and  in  that  time  it  has  been 
passed  upon  and  interpreted  by  some  of  the  clearest 
and  most  acute  minds  the  world  has  known ;  it  has 
been  written  on  and  expounded  and  discussed  by 
men  of  great  learning,  great  honesty,  and  great  abil- 

1  Leroy-Beaulieu:  The  United  States  in  the  Twentieth  Century,  p.  xvii. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     149 

ity  at  perhaps  greater  length  than  any  other  man- 
made  code,  and  yet  to-day  we  are  as  far  from  the 
last  word  having  been  said  as  we  were  almost  at 
the  beginning.  What  do  a  few  simple  words  mean 
that  are  in  every-day  use,  words  so  simple  that  the 
ordinary  public-school  boy  in  the  lower  grades  has 
no  difficulty  in  understanding  them  ?  But  great 
lawyers,  great  jurists,  great  statesmen,  great  writers 
spend  long  hours  in  patient  research  endeavoring 
to  give  these  simple  words  an  interpretation  that 
shall  square  with  their  own  views,  or  what  they  be 
lieve  to  be  the  intent  of  their  writers,  or  the  purpose 
for  which  they  were  designed ;  which  by  that  con 
struction  shall  be  for  the  good  of  the  state  or  the 
benefit  of  the  people.  In  the  forum,  in  the  courts,  in 
the  press,  there  is  constant  discussion  of  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States.  That  is  not  merely 
an  intellectual  diversion,  the  luxury  of  idle  minds, 
to  whom  academic,  hair-splitting  argument  is  an 
amusement  as  keen  as  it  was  to  the  Greeks  and 
Romans,  who,  at  the  height  of  their  intellectual  de 
velopment,  sat  enraptured  under  the  spell  of  their 
great  orators;  nor  does  it  bear  any  resemblance 
to  "  the  sub tili ties  and  quiddities  of  mediaeval  theo 
logians,  who  seriously  discussed  such  silly  questions 
as  the  digestibility  of  the  consecrated  elements  in 
the  eucharist."  This  discussion  of  the  American 
Constitution  has  a  deeper  and  more  ennobling  pur 
pose.  The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  to 
the  American  people  a  code  political  as  well  as  a 


150          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

code  moral.  It  is  the  ark  of  the  covenant.  No  im 
pious  hands  may  be  laid  upon  it,  for  that  were  sac 
rilege;  it  would,  if  it  were  falsely  construed,  destroy 
political  liberty  and  a  moral  standard  that  men 
regard  as  vital  for  their  spiritual  growth. 

The  Constitution  of  the  United  States  is  a  com 
paratively  short  document  and  not  more  difficult 
to  memorize  than  many  other  pages  of  prose  that 
students  have  committed  to  heart.  If,  then,  there 
is  this  wide  difference  of  opinion  as  to  the  meaning 
of  the  words  and  purposes  of  the  American  Con 
stitution,  how  inevitable  that  there  should  be  even 
greater  differences  of  opinion  as  to  the  meaning 
of  that  much  larger  and  more  complicated  constitu 
tion  of  the  Puritan,  the  Bible  ? 

The  Puritans  had  their  constitution  made  for 
them  not  by  man  but  by  the  inspired  Word  of  God ; 
but  because  they  were  men  and  not  divinely  in 
spired,  it  was  necessary  that  they  should  seek  its 
interpretation  according  to  their  own  human  limita 
tions  and  the  finite  capacity  of  their  understand 
ing.  That  could  not  be  done  in  a  day  or  a  month 
or  a  year.  It  was  a  matter  that  required  the  earnest 
devotion  of  serious  and  zealous  men,  who  ap 
proached  the  study  of  their  subject  in  a  proper 
frame  of  mind,  who  must  look  upon  it  as  the  great 
est  of  all  duties,  who,  convinced  of  the  correctness 
of  their  judgment,  were  like  the  champions  of  old, 
ready  to  enter  the  lists  against  all  comers  to  defend 
their  cause. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     151 

An  effective  but  cumbersome  weapon  was  the 
lance;  much  more  convenient  and  deadly  is  the 
magazine  rifle.  The  expounders  of  the  Puritan 
constitution  must  needs  use  the  means  at  hand.  It 
was  not  a  day  of  steam  printing-presses  that  turned 
out  their  millions  of  printed  words  by  the  hour;  the 
machinery  of  distribution  was  wanting.  No  man 
was  driven  by  the  spur  of  haste;  society  was  not 
revolutionized  between  breakfast  and  dinner;  repu 
tations  were  not  made  or  destroyed  between  dinner 
and  bedtime  by  the  facile  pen  of  the  morning  news 
paper  leader  writer.  The  controversialists  of  the 
Puritan  constitution,  the  strict  constructionists  and 
the  liberal  expounders  as  we  should  term  them  to 
day,  relied  on  the  tract  and  the  spoken  word  to  con 
vince.  Their  tracts  like  their  discourses  were  heavy, 
rambling,  discursive,  frequently  involved.  Nothing 
more  strikingly  marks  the  difference  between  the 
old  and  the  new  than  our  brevity,  our  conciseness, 
our  horror  of  circumlocution  or  the  unnecessary 
use  of  mere  words.  We  have  simplified  the  ex 
pression  as  well  as  the  method  of  expression;  we 
have  substituted  the  typewriter  for  the  quill  pen, 
and  thrown  into  the  limbo  of  forgotten  things 
the  grandiloquent  and  meaningless  phrases  that 
require  too  much  time  to  form  into  thought  and 
too  much  space  to  shape  into  words. 

It  was  a  day  of  controversy,  a  day  when  men 
delighted  in  argument,  for  controversy  and  argu 
ment  were  the  means  by  which  the  people  were 


152          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

educated,  but  it  was  not  a  day  of  little  things. 
Men  of  mature  years  did  not,  like  Didymus,  waste 
their  time  in  inquiries  as  to  the  relative  ages  of 
Hecuba  and  Helen,  or  the  name  of  the  mother  of 
^Eneas,  or  the  character  of  Anacreon  or  Sappho.1 
Argument  brought  home  to  the  people  in  the  quick 
est  and  most  direct  way  the  truths  that  it  was 
essential  for  them  to  know.  For  knowledge  they 
were  eager.  They  avidly  read  what  was  written,  they 
listened  with  absorbent  minds  to  what  they  heard. 
To  them  that  was  a  pleasure  no  less  than  a  duty. 

Much  has  been  written  of  the  gloom  of  the 
Puritan  Sunday,  of  the  long  sermons  and  services 
at  the  meeting-houses,  of  the  peculiar  institution 
that  was  native  to  the  soil  of  New  England.  Now 
in  the  first  place  the  Puritan  Sabbath  was  not 
indigenous  to  the  soil  of  Massachusetts,  but  was 
one  of  the  things  that  Englishmen  brought  with 
them.  "And  to  the  end  the  Sabbath  may  be  cele 
brated  in  a  religious  manner,  we  appoint  that  all 
that  inhabit  the  Plantation,  both  for  the  general 
and  particular  employment,  may  surcease  their 
labor  every  Saturday  throughout  the  year  at  three 
of  the  clock  in  the  afternoon;  and  that  they  spend 
the  rest  of  that  day  in  catechising  and  preparation 
for  the  Sabbath,  as  the  ministers  shall  direct,"  were 
the  instructions  given  to  Endicott  and  his  council  in 
1629  by  the  New  England  Company  in  London.2 

1  Dill :  Roman  Society  from  Nero  to  Marcus  Aurelius,  p.  300. 

2  Young:  Chronicles  of  the  First  Planters  of  the  Colony  of  Massachusetts 
Bay,  p.  163. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     153 

It  is  easy  enough  to  understand  how  the  custom 
originated.  Warrant  for  it  was  found  in  the  Puritan 
constitution,  where  precise  injunctions  wrere  laid 
down  for  the  observance  of  the  Sabbath.  Thus 
in  Leviticus  xxiii,  32,  the  Jews  are  commanded, 
"from  even  unto  even,  shall  ye  celebrate  your  Sab 
bath."  Mather  says  that  John  Cotton  began  the 
Sabbath  the  evening  before;  "for  which  keeping  of 
the  Sabbath  from  evening  to  evening,  he  wrote 
argument  before  his  coming  to  New  England:  and 
I  suppose,  'twas  from  his  reason  and  practice,  that 
the  Christians  of  New-England  have  generally  done 
so  too." l  Hutchinson  says  it  was  some  time  before 
this  custom  was  settled.  Hooker,  in  a  letter  written 
about  the  year  1640,  says,  "The  question  touching 
the  beginning  of  the  Sabbath  is  now  on  foot  among 
us,  hath  once  been  spoken  to,  and  we  are  to  give  in 
our  arguments  each  to  the  other,  so  that  we  may 
ripen  our  thoughts  concerning  that  truth,  and  if  the 
Lord  will,  it  may  more  fully  appear";  and  in 
another  letter,  March,  1640,  "Mr.  Huit  hath  not 
answered  our  arguments  against  the  beginning  the 
Sabbath  at  Morning."  2 

Through  the  mist  of  long  years  we  look  back  on 
the  Puritan  Sabbath  and  we  see  nothing  but  dark 
ness  and  gloom,  a  day  hi  which  the  austere  soul  of 
the  fanatical  Puritan  could  sink  itself  in  the  dread 
of  eternal  punishment  and  rejoice  in  the  thought 

1  Mather:  Magnolia,  vol.  i,  p.  253. 

1  Hutchinson:  History  of  Massachusetts,  vol.  i,  p.  428. 


154          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  everlasting  damnation.  Malice  aided  by  ingenu 
ity  has  heightened  this  mirage.  Not  content  with 
imposing  an  all-day  religious  observance  on  these 
unfortunate  progenitors  of  a  race,  natural  emotions 
and  sympathies  were  crushed  out  as  abominable  in 
the  sight  of  the  Lord.  We  know  of  course  now 
that  the  celebrated  Blue  Laws  had  no  existence  in 
fact  and  were  the  creation  of  malicious  imagination, 
but  generations  have  believed  in  all  sincerity  that 
the  code  of  the  Puritans  forbade  a  husband  to 
kiss  his  wife  on  Sunday,  that  Sunday  was  to  little 
children  a  day  of  torture  and  torment,  and  that 
the  Puritan  father  found  pleasure  in  making  them 
suffer. 

"Home,  as  we  conceive  it  now,"  Green  says, 
"was  the  creation  of  the  Puritan.  Wife  and  child 
rose  from  mere  dependents  on  the  will  of  husband 
or  father,  as  husband  and  father  saw  in  them  saints 
like  himself,  souls  hallowed  by  the  touch  of  a  divine 
spirit  and  called  with  a  divine  calling  like  his  own. 
The  sense  of  spiritual  fellowship  gave  a  new  ten 
derness  and  refinement  to  the  common  family 
affections." l  Instead  of  Sunday  being  to  the  Puritan 
a  day  to  be  dreaded  and  to  be  approached  with  a 
feeling  of  repugnance,  it  was  a  day  to  be  looked 
forward  to  with  delight.  Campbell  has  well  said 
that  "the  Puritan  took  as  keen  a  pleasure  in  his 
four  hours'  sermon  from  a  moving  preacher  as 
ever  did  the  most  ardent  admirer  of  the  drama 

1  Green:  A  History  of  the  English  People,  vol.  vi,  p.  199. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     155 

at  the  first  night  of  a  great  play,"  *  It  was  a  day  of 
quiet  and  rational  enjoyment  according  to  the  Puri 
tan  idea  of  what  was  rational  and  meet  to  be  enjoyed 
by  the  godly. 

Puritanism,  it  cannot  be  too  often  repeated,  was 
a  political-social  movement  as  much  as  it  ever  was 
a  religious;  it  was  the  sowing  of  the  great  seed  of 
democracy  that  has  overrun  the  earth.  The  life  of 
the  common  people  of  England,  of  the  common 
people  everywhere,  was  hard  enough,  and  there  was 
little  consideration  shown  for  their  comfort  or 
amusement,  for  the  limitation  of  their  hours  of  labor, 
or  their  protection  against  the  oppression  of  their 
employers,  against  that  most  iniquitous  form  of 
sweating  that  even  to-day  is  the  disgrace  of  civil 
ization.  The  England  of  Elizabeth  was  "Merrie 
England,"  but  it  was  a  merriment  more  on  the 
surface  than  in  the  hearts  of  the  beast  of  burden  — 
the  common  people  —  who  bore  England  on  its 
back.  Elizabethan  statutes  made  it  legal  for  men 
to  work  on  Sunday;  more  than  that,  "if,  for  any 
scrupulosity  or  grudge  of  conscience,  men  should 
superstitiously  abstain  from  working  on  those  days, 
that  then  they  should  grievously  offend  and  dis 
please  God."2  Gradually  there  came  to  be  no 
distinction  between  Sunday  and  the  secular  days  of 
the  week,  until  with  the  death  of  Elizabeth  Parlia 
ment  refused  to  sit  on  Sunday,  servile  labor  was 

1  Campbell:  The  Puritan  in  Holland,  England,  and  America,  vol.  ii, 
p.  162. 

3  Campbell:  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  161. 


156          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

abolished  on  that  day,  and  the  so-called  "Puritan 
Sunday,"  in  contradistinction  to  the  "Continental 
Sunday,"  was  established  both  in  England  and  the 
United  States. 

The  Puritans  have  been  accused  of  taking  their 
pleasures  sadly, — which  is  the  same  accusation  that 
has  been  brought  by  the  French 1  against  the 
English  and  the  English  against  the  Americans  in 
our  day,  —  and  much  fun  has  been  made  of  the 
Thursday  lecture,  the  Puritan's  one  idea  of  enjoy 
ment,  which  naturally  took  a  theological  form. 
As  a  matter  of  historical  accuracy,  again,  the 
Thursday  lecture  was  not  a  Puritan  institution,  but 
was  borrowed  from  England.  Hume  tells  of  the 
intention  in  1637  "to  suppress  all  the  Wednesdays' 
lectures  in  London,"and  he  adds:  "It  is  observable, 
that  the  church  of  Rome  and  that  of  London,  being 
both  of  them  lovers  of  form  and  ceremony  and 
order,  are  more  friends  to  prayer  than  preaching; 
while  the  puritanical  sectaries,  who  find  that  the 
latter  method  of  address,  being  directed  to  a  numer 
ous  audience  present  and  visible,  is  more  inflaming 
and  animating,  have  always  regarded  it  as  the 
chief  part  of  divine  service."  He  concludes  with 
this  philosophical  observation,  which  is  as  pertinent 
to-day  as  it  was  when  written :  "  Such  circumstances, 
though  minute,  it  may  not  be  improper  to  transmit 
to  posterity ;  that  those,  who  are  curious  of  tracing 

1  "II  m'a  semble  qu'une  sorte  de  nuage  couvrait  habituellement  leurs 
traits;  ils  m'ont  paru  graves  et  presque  tristes  jusquedans  leurs  plaisirs. "  — 
de  Tocqueville,  vol.  iii,  p.  274. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     157 

the  history  of  the  human  mind,  may  remark  how 
far  its  several  singularities  coincide  in  different 
ages."  *  In  other  words,  the  eternal  revolution  of 
the  wheel. 

The  Thursday  lecture  of  the  Puritan  became  the 
Puritan  dissipation.  Many  people  went  to  the  lec 
tures  because  they  found  it  more  comfortable  to 
listen  to  an  exhortation  than  to  bend  their  backs  in 
field  or  household  labor;  the  young  people  across 
the  meeting-house  could  at  least  see  one  another. 
So  seriously  did  the  lectures  interfere  with  orderly 
arrangement  that  the  magistrates  made  repeated 
attempts  to  restrict  them. 

Admirers  of  the  Puritans  have  found  evidence 
that  they  were  men  of  extraordinary  logical  minds, 
and  to  this  quality  has  been  ascribed  so  many  of 
their  actions  and  the  results  they  accomplished. 
This  is  again  to  invest  them  with  attributes  little 
short  of  the  miraculous  and  to  set  aside  perfectly 
natural  causes.  They  were  not  more  logical  than 
the  rest  of  their  race  —  Bacons  and  Lockes  are  the 
human  veins  of  gold  in  a  dull  mass  of  quartz  - 
although  they  were  hard-headed  and  had  much  com 
mon  sense;  despite  their  fanaticism  in  religion, 
which  was  their  concept  of  life,  there  was  another 
side  of  their  character,  which  appears  contradic 
tory  and  was,  in  fact,  contradictory;  but  all  men 
worth  the  study  are  bilateral.  Fanatics  they  were, 
and  yet  in  all  things  affecting  civil  government  and 

1  Hume:  History  of  England,  p.  549. 


158          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  development  of  society  and  the  state  they 
showed  splendid  sanity  and  an  equable  poise,  two 
most  admirable  qualities,  without  which  a  sustained 
course  leading  to  definite  results  is  impossible. 
While  they  were  in  many  things  narrow  and  obsti 
nate,  judging  as  they  asked  to  be  judged,  paltering 
neither  with  the  truth  nor  the  right,  firm  in  their 
convictions,  steadfast  in  their  faith,  not  so  much  be 
cause  it  was  a  duty,  which  is  the  most  contemptible 
code  of  virtue  man  can  adopt,  but  because  it  brought 
its  own  reward  in  the  satisfaction  of  well  doing,  they 
yielded  to  outside  influences;  they  were  as  malle 
able  as  the  finely  tempered  steel  that  bends  but  will 
not  break;  and  they  were  possessed  of  an  extraordi 
nary  power  of  assimilating  all  that  was  best  in  the 
civilization  and  institutions  of  the  rest  of  the  world. 
It  made  them  always  mindful  of  the  thing  re 
quired.  Typical  of  this  was  the  response  of  a  mem 
ber  of  the  Legislature  at  the  time  of  the  historic 
"Dark  Day,"  when  the  Day  of  Judgment  was  sup 
posed  to  be  at  hand.  He  opposed  adjournment, 
saying:  "Either  the  Day  of  Judgment  has  come,  or 
it  has  not ;  if  the  Day  has  come,  I  choose  to  be  found 
at  the  post  of  duty;  and  if  it  has  not  come,  there  is 
no  reason  for  an  adjournment."1 

There  is  one  great  quality  about  the  reformer  that 
has  ever  been  noted.  Whether  he  is  narrow,  stern, 
and  harsh  as  Calvin,  or  more  pleasure-loving  and 
human  as  Luther,  whether  he  is  obsessed  with  but  a 

1  Byington:  The  Puritan  in  England  and  New  England,  p.  120. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     159 

single  idea  or  touches  life  at  many  points,  the  re 
former —  not  the  mere  mouthing  demagogue  who 
uses  his  cunning  to  advantage  himself  but  the  man 
of  strong  and  deep-rooted  convictions,  willing  to  die 
if  necessary  in  the  defense  of  what  he  knows  to  be 
right — has  in  him  always  something  of  the  imagina 
tion  and  imagery  of  the  poet,  the  vision  of  the  seer, 
the  wisdom  of  the  prophet,  the  common  sense  of  the 
statesman ;  and  he  sees  farther  and  deeper  into  the 
great  heart  of  humanity  than  even  he  is  consciously 
aware.  Every  great  reform,  those  great  reforms 
that  have  swept  society  from  its  old  moorings  and 
driven  it  with  irresistible  force  into  new  channels, 
has  had  small  beginnings  and  has  gained  mo 
mentum  because  its  end  lay  far  beyond  the  hori 
zon  of  the  mind  of  the  reformer  when  he  began 
his  self-imposed  task.  He  has  grown  on  what 
he  created,  and  a  part  at  least  of  his  own  person 
ality,  his  own  courage  and  self-denial  and  righteous 
ness  he  has  put  in  the  hearts  and  minds  of  his 
followers. 

In  making  Sunday  a  day  devoted  to  religious 
observance  and  prohibiting  secular  employment, 
the  Puritan  simply  struck  a  blow  in  defense  of  the 
common  people  and  anticipated  by  three  hundred 
years  a  great  economic  truth.  It  was  long  after  the 
factory  system  had  been  established  in  England 
at  the  close  of  the  Napoleonic  wars  that  English 
statesmen  and  legislators  had  the  knowledge  forced 
upon  them  that  men  and  women  engaged  in  manual 


160          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

labor,  like  the  machines  to  which  they  were  yoked, 
could  not  be  driven  beyond  their  capacity,  and  that 
when  they  were  overtaxed  they  broke  down  under 
the  strain.  So  densely  ignorant  were  men  of 
economic  laws  that  at  first  they  believed  that 
human  life  had  no  economic  value,  and  while 
machinery  represented  capital,  and  therefore  must 
be  conserved,  humanity  was  the  inexhaustible  sup 
ply  of  raw  material  always  pressing  on  the  market 
and  always  to  be  purchased  at  a  trifling  cost,  and, 
like  all  raw  material,  of  no  value  until  it  had  been 
converted  into  the  finished  product.  Men  and 
women  were  fed  to  machines  as  human  lives  were 
laid  in  the  arms  of  Moloch.  When  it  was  discov 
ered  that  labor  was  not  raw  material  but  an  asset, 
that  the  vigor  of  its  workers  measured  the  commer 
cial  strength  of  the  state,  only  then  was  the  workman 
accorded  some  of  the  consideration  shown  to  the 
machine;  then  began  that  great  mass  of  statutes 
whose  purpose  it  is  to  protect  men  and  women 
against  the  rapacity  and  ignorance  of  their  employ 
ers;  to  make  employment  less  hazardous;  to  keep 
children  of  tender  years  out  of  the  factory  and  the 
mine,  and  to  give  them  a  brief  respite  before  they 
are  chained  to  their  never-ending  drudgery. 

The  Puritan  Sunday  was  threefold  in  purpose. 
First:  It  was  economic,  as  I  have  already  pointed  out, 
because  it  brought  to  rest  for  one  day  in  seven  all 
the  machinery  of  society,  human  as  well  as  material. 
It  was  as  sound  in  theory  and  principle  then  as  it  is 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     161 

to-day.  The  necessity  for  this  cessation  from  toil 
having  been  recognized,  it  could  only  be  enforced  by 
the  concrete  expression  of  the  community  voiced  in 
legislation.  Second:  It  was  political,  because  it  was 
the  assertion  of  the  rights  of  the  people  to  control  at 
least  a  part  of  their  time  and  to  assert  their  inde 
pendence.  Puritanism  sowed  the  seed  of  demo 
cracy.  Third:  It  was  religious,  because  it  was  or 
dained  that  "six  days  thou  shalt  labour,  and  do  all 
thy  work :  but  the  seventh  day  is  the  sabbath  of  the 
Lord  thy  God :  in  it  thou  shalt  not  do  any  work, thou, 
nor  thy  son,  nor  thy  daughter,  nor  thy  manservant, 
nor  thy  maidservant,  nor  thine  ox,  nor  thine  ass, 
nor  any  of  thy  cattle,  nor  the  stranger  that  is  within 
thy  gates ;  that  thy  manservant  and  thy  maidservant 
may  rest  as  well  as  thou."  1 

Much  as  the  Puritan  might  discuss  the  interpre 
tation  of  his  constitution,  he  did  not  dare  to  arrogate 
to  himself  the  right  to  discuss  its  fundamental  pro 
visions  nor  to  disregard  them.  His  attitude  was 
perfectly  consistent.2  There  was  no  distinction  to 
be  made  between  the  major  and  minor  clauses  of 
his  code.  The  command  not  to  commit  adultery 
was  no  higher  than  the  injunction  to  keep  holy  the 
Lord's  day.  He  read  in  his  Bible  that  while  the 
children  of  Israel  were  in  the  wilderness  they 

1  Deuteronomy  v,  13, 14. 

2  "Cartwright,  who  had  a  chief  hand  in  reducing  puritanism  to  a  system, 
held  that  the  magistrate  was  bound  to  adhere  to  the  judicial  laws  of  Moses 
and  might  not  punish  nor  pardon  otherwise  than  they  prescribed,  and  him 
the  Massachusetts  people  followed."  —  Hutchinson,  vol.  ii,  p.  463. 


162          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

found  a  man  who  gathered  sticks  on  the  sabbath 
day,  who  was  brought  before  Moses  to  be  judged, 
who  sought  the  counsel  of  the  Lord  and  was  told 
that  the  man  must  be  stoned  to  death,  "and  he 
died,  as  the  Lord  commanded  Moses."  l 

The  religious  side  of  the  Puritan  Sunday  we  can 
of  course  easily  comprehend,  and  because  the  formal 
religious  observance  was  on  the  surface  to  be  seen 
by  the  dullest  intellect,  while  the  political  and 
economic  effects  were  more  subtle  and  lay  buried 
deep  in  the  brains  of  a  few  men  of  far  vision,  Sunday 
as  a  day  of  austere  religious  ceremony  has  alone 
been  remembered.  I  have  said  that  Sunday  was  a 
day  of  keen  enjoyment  to  those  men  who  found 
pleasure  in  intellectual  discussion,  and  Sunday 
was  the  day  on  which  a  moving  preacher  gave  to 
his  audience  enough  material  to  fill  their  minds 
and  hearts  for  the  following  six  days.  Fiske  has 
pointed  out  that  "it  was  absolutely  essential  that 
every  one  should  be  taught  from  early  childhood 
how  to  read  and  understand  the  Bible.  So  much 
instruction  as  this  was  assumed  to  be  a  sacred  duty 
which  the  community  owed  to  every  child  born 
within  its  jurisdiction."  2  Just  as  to-day  American 
boys  and  girls  are  expected  to  acquire  at  least  a 
rudimentary  knowledge  of  the  American  Constitu 
tion,  so  in  those  days  the  children  of  the  Puritans 
were  taught  the  code  of  their  state. 

1  Numbers  xv,  32-36. 

3  Fiske:  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  151. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     163 

As  men  advance  in  years  and  understanding  their 
point  of  view  shifts  with  the  ever  shifting  attitude 
of  society ;  but  children  have  always  been  the  same, 
because  they  are  born  without  prejudice  and  with 
out  restraint,  and  it  is  only  as  hereditary  influences 
develop  and  education  makes  itself  felt  that  they 
cease  to  act  by  natural  impulse  and  become  con 
ventionalized.  We  have  abundant  evidence  that 
the  children  of  the  Puritans  no  more  relished  the 
preaching  of  their  ministers  or  the  enforced  atten 
tion  they  were  compelled  to  give  to  long  and  tedious 
sermons  that  were  over  their  heads,  that  either  set 
their  little  heads  nodding  in  sheer  weariness  or  held 
their  eyes  wide  open  in  terror  as  they  listened  to  the 
threats  of  eternal  damnation,  than  children  of  to 
day  really  enjoy  the  hours  spent  at  school  or  the 
routine  of  Sunday  clothes  and  Sunday  church, 
where  they  fidget  and  grow  hot  and  long  for  their 
release.  Puritan  children  were  either  normal, 
healthy  children  with  all  the  undisciplined  spirits 
of  the  virile  young  animal,  or  else  fear  and  a  vivid 
imagination  that  they  were  too  young  to  control 
made  them  intensely  morbid  and  introspective; 
they  would  have  become  neurotic  had  they  lived 
in  a  more  genial  clime;  in  an  older  and  more 
luxurious  civilization  passion  would  have  been 
aroused  by  an  appeal  to  the  senses.  Nothing  is 
more  pathetic  than  to  read  of  the  mental  tortures 
through  which  some  of  these  little  children  passed, 
and  the  few  words  set  down  in  diaries  and  letters, 


164          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

incidentally  and  almost  casually,  reveal  the  over 
wrought  state  in  which  so  many  of  these  unhappy 
boys  and  girls  lived. 

Betty,  the  young  daughter  of  an  eloquent 
preacher,  once  heard  her  father  deliver  a  sermon 
that  greatly  stirred  his  congregation,  so  much  so 
"that  they  all  cried  out,"  and  this  is  the  effect  the 
discourse  had  on  her:  — 

"  A  little  while  after  dinner  she  burst  out  into  an 
amazing  cry,  which  caused  all  the  family  to  cry  too. 
Her  mother  asked  her  the  reason ;  she  gave  none. 
At  last  she  said  she  was  afraid  she  would  go  to 
Hell;  her  sins  were  not  pardoned.  She  was  first 
wounded  by  my  reading  a  sermon  of  Mr.  Norton's, 
text,  ye  shall  seek  me  and  shall  not  find  me.  And 
those  words  in  the  sermon,  ye  shall  seek  me  and 
die  in  your  sins  ran  in  her  mind  and  terrified  her 
greatly  .  .  .  told  me  she  was  afraid  she  should  go 
to  Hell,  was  like  Spira,  not  elected."1 

A  boy  wrote  in  his  diary:  "Of  the  manifold  sins 
of  which  then  I  was  guilty  of  none  so  sticks  upon 
me  as  that  being  very  young  I  was  whittling  on  the 
Sabbath  day;  and  for  fear  of  being  seen  I  did  it 
behind  the  door.  A  great  reproach  of  God."  This 
youth  died  at  nineteen.2 

But  we  get  glimpses  of  the  other  side  of  child 
hood,  the  irrepressible  spirit  of  fun  and  pleasure, 
that  broke  the  law  of  the  family  for  the  mere  pleas- 

1  Fisher:  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times,  vol.  i,  p.  141. 

2  Fisher,  op.  cit.,  p.  142. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     165 

ure  of  defiance  and  because  youth  must  have  its 
fling.  As  early  as  1657  it  was  found  necessary  to 
pass  this  law  in  Boston :  — 

"Forasmuch  as  sundry  complaints  are  made  that 
several  persons  have  received  hurt  by  boys  and 
young  men  playing  at  football  in  the  streets,  these 
therefore  are  to  enjoin  that  none  be  found  at  that 
game  in  any  of  the  streets,  lanes  or  enclosures  of 
this  town  under  the  penalty  of  twenty  shillings  for 
every  such  offence."  1  Really  that  law  does  not 
differ  much,  except  in  the  severity  of  its  penalty, 
from  the  municipal  ordinances  and  regulations  of 
to-day,  and  it  shows  that  the  Puritan  boy  could  at 
times  make  himself  just  as  much  of  a  nuisance  to 
his  elders  as  the  twentieth-century  youngster. 

The  stern  control  the  Puritan  had  over  himself 
is  typically  illustrated  in  two  matter-of-fact  entries 
in  Samuel  Sewall's  diary,  Sewall  "the  Puritan 
Pepys":  — 

"  October  29,  1698.  Thomas  Savage  junr,  shop 
keeper,  and  Sarah  Threeneedles  were  brought  face 
to  face  in  a  very  great  Audience:  She  vehemently 
accused  him,  and  he  asserted  his  innocency  with 
vehement  Asseverations.  She  said  he  had  ruin'd 
her ;  if  he  would  have  promis'd  her  any  thing,  it  had 
not  come  to  this.  Said  she  forgave  him,  Judgment 
of  God  hung  over  him  if  did  not  repent. 

"Fifth-day,  Novr  17th.  Very  fair  serene  wether ; 
Mr.  Cotton  Mather  preaches  at  the  South-Meeting- 

1  Earle:  Customs  and  Fashions  in  Old  New  England,  p.  20. 


166          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

house;  Sarah  Threeneedles  is  an  auditor;  is  a 
very  vast  Assembly,  and  the  street  full  of  such  as 
could  not  get  in;  51.  Psalm  2d  verse  sung,  9-15 
verses.  Mr.  Willard  read  the  whole,  and  I  set  the 
tune.  After  Lecture  Sarah  Threeneedles  is  executed . 
Mr.  Woodbridge  went  to  the  place  of  execution  and 
pray'd  with  her  there."  1 

Not  a  word  as  to  the  unfortunate  Sarah  Three- 
needles;  not  a  superfluous  adjective.  What  in  the 
hands  of  Hawthorne  became  a  classic,  is  to  Sewall 
a  bare  record  of  fact. 

While  the  Puritan  fathers  carefully  regulated 
marriage  —  because  marriage  was  an  economic 
necessity  and  both  spinsterhood  and  bachelorhood 
were  frowned  upon,  as  the  unmarried  of  suitable 
age  were  a  drag  upon  the  proper  development  of 
the  colony — even  Puritanism  could  not  crush  out 
the  romance  of  love.  An  English  traveler  gives  this 
glimpse  of  Boston  in  1663:  — 

"  On  the  south  there  is  a  small  but  pleasant  Com 
mon,  where  the  Gallants,  a  little  before  sunset,  walk 
with  their  Marmalet-Madams  till  the  nine  o'clock 
bell  rings  them  home  to  their  respective  habita 
tions."  2  This  picture  of  gallants  and  marmalet- 
madams  try  sting  in  the  soft  twilight  and  losing 
themselves  in  the  mazes  of  an  undiscovered  country 
rather  upsets  the  preconceived  idea  of  Puritan 
austerity  and  their  horror  of  even  an  approach  to 

1  Sewall:  Diary,  Massachusetts  Historical  Society,  vol.  v,  p.  486. 

2  Earle:  op.  dt.,  p.  40. 


THE   PURITAN  CONSTITUTION     167 

sentiment.  Sacred  ground  that  small  but  pleasant 
common  to  Priscilla  and  her  sisters,  who,  Puritans 
though  they  were,  had  all  of  woman's  infinite  capa 
city  for  love  and  passion. 

Just  as  the  Puritans  discovered  a  great  economic 
truth  that  only  received  the  world's  indorsement 
three  centuries  later,  so  a  great  social  law  was 
revealed  to  them,  the  importance  of  which  philoso 
phers  did  not  grasp  until  the  nineteenth  century 
was  waning.  Until  the  dominant  force  of  Puri 
tanism  made  itself  felt  and  changed  the  whole  social 
system  of  England,  education  was  a  thing  distinctly 
the  prerogative  of  the  classes  'and  denied  the 
masses.  There  was  reason  for  this.  It  was  not 
advisable  that  the  people  should  know  too  much, 
that  they  should  be  able  to  read  and  think  for 
themselves.  The  strength  of  feudalism,  and  later 
the  divine  right  of  kings  and  the  autocracy  of  scep 
tre  and  mitre,  was  buttressed  in  the  ignorance  of  the 
great  mass  to  whom  majesty  temporal  and  spiritual 
could  not  be  questioned  because  men  were  denied 
the  capacity  of  voicing  what  they  dumbly  felt. 

The  Puritan  struck  a  blow  at  ignorance  and  in 
doing  so  fought  for  liberty.  So  long  as  the  people 
were  unlettered,  so  long  would  they  believe  in  super 
stition  and  meekly  submit  to  political  despotism. 
The  surest  way  to  raise  the  social  level  was  to  raise 
the  general  level  of  intelligence  and  to  teach  men 
the  habit  of  thinking  for  themselves.  The  Puritans 
were  the  originators  of  the  "campaign  of  educa- 


168          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tion."  Curious  indeed  that  what  the  Puritans  did 
in  their  meeting-houses  and  at  their  hearthstones 
the  modern  state  has  simply  done  more  elaborately 
with  the  complicated  machinery  of  board  schools 
and  compulsory  school  attendance,  factory  laws  and 
other  statutes  that  prohibit  the  employment  of 
children  unless  they  can  give  evidence  of  having 
received  at  least  the  rudiments  of  education;  that 
when  a  democracy  must  convert  men  from  the  here 
sies  of  false  economic  beliefs  it  adopts  the  methods 
of  the  Puritan  theocracy.  It  is  axiomatic  that  the 
civilization  of  a  state  is  in  inverse  ratio  to  the 
illiteracy  of  its  people. 

Because  the  Puritans  saw  the  necessity  of  over 
throwing  superstitions  and  encouraging  resistance 
to  political  despotism  it  is  not  to  be  assumed  that 
they  emancipated  themselves  from  superstition  or 
despotism.  The  candid  historian  has  little  to  choose 
between  Popish  and  Protestant  superstition ;  theo 
cratic  despotism  was  as  harsh  as  monarchical.  That 
has  ever  been  the  case;  and  if  the  Puritans  had 
simply  exchanged  one  fetich  for  another,  things  alike 
would  simply  have  been  called  by  different  names 
and  the  world  would  have  advanced  not  one  step. 
But  in  their  passion  for  knowledge  the  founders  of 
the  Puritan  state  put  into  the  hands  of  the  people  a 
weapon  that  was  to  prove  their  undoing  and  should 
destroy  theocracy  and  set  up  in  its  place  a  broader, 
a  more  tolerant,  a  more  humanizing  code. 

The    more    educated    men    became,  the    more 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     169 

clearly  they  saw  that  a  theocratic  state,  theoretically 
ideal,  was  practically  impossible;  and  the  force  of 
circumstances  and  the  broadening  of  intellect  and 
the  humanizing  effect  that  education  has  on  the 
whole  concept  of  life  compelled  them  to  question 
the  right  of  man  to  regulate  all  human  affairs  by 
the  teaching  of  the  Bible.  In  the  very  nature  of 
things  it  was  inevitable.  Modern  society  has  been 
able  to  accept  the  spiritual  teachings  of  the  Bible, 
but  has  dissociated  it  from  the  temporal.  That  the 
Puritan,  at  first,  could  not  do,  for  the  essence  of  the 
Puritan  character  was  consistency,  and  consist 
ency  when  pushed  to  the  extreme  leads  to  narrow 
ness,  stubbornness,  rigidity.  It  hardens  character, 
and  with  that  hardening  is  lost  a  certain  amount  of 
intellectual  pliability,  the  power  to  see  both  sides 
of  a  controversial  question,  or  to  admit  that  there 
may  be  some  merit  in  your  adversary's  morals  or 
manners.  The  Puritan  stands  on  the  page  of  his 
tory  as  an  extremely  narrow  and  self-centred  man, 
but  it  was  his  consistency,  his  steadfast  adherence 
to  the  code  that  he  had  created  for  himself,  that 
made  him  so,  and  not  because  he  was  racially 
different  from  the  men  who  were  not  of  his  faith. 
It  was  demanded  of  these  early  settlers  that  they 
should  be  orthodox,  that  they  should  accept  the 
Word  as  it  was  delivered  to  them,  and  neither 
question  its  authority  nor  seek  to  give  it  an  inter 
pretation  that  might  be  more  comfortable.  But  a 
people  must  either  accept  orthodoxy  and  remain 


170          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

under  the  thrall  of  its  superstition,  or  with  their 
intellectual  growth,  in  their  ardent  desire  to  solve 
the  great  mystery  of  the  universal  scheme,  first  have 
their  doubts  aroused,  and  then  begin  to  question, 
and  then  finally  boldly  deny,  or  at  least  challenge 
their  opponents  to  bring  proof  in  support  of  the 
faith  that  is  in  them.  The  very  methods  adopted 
by  the  Puritan  fathers  to  inculcate  obedience  and 
to  maintain  the  supremacy  of  the  theocratic  state 
were  the  methods  that  were  most  conducive  to 
quicken  intellectual  agnosticism,  and  whatever 
divergent  views  we  may  entertain  of  the  Puritan, 
there  can  be  no  question  as  to  the  force  of  his 
intellect  and  his  power  as  a  controversialist.  The 
perpetual  discussion  of  the  Biblical  constitution, 
the  polemical  warfare  carried  on  through  the  print 
ing-press,  the  one  great  thing  which  occupied  men's 
thoughts  almost  to  the  exclusion  of  everything  else, 
that  unconsciously  colored  their  lives  and  moulded 
their  conduct  as  soil  and  sunshine  give  to  a  flower 
its  fragrance  and  delicate  texture,  were,  as  Fiske 
says,  no  mean  school  of  intellectual  training.  In 
addition  there  was  the  basic  Puritan  theory  that 
ignorance  lay  at  the  root  of  all  civil  and  religious 
despotism  and  kept  men  in  a  state  of  moral  and 
intellectual  slavery.  In  putting  this  theory  into 
practical  effect  we  see  again  that  the  Puritans  were 
less  logical  than  some  of  their  admirers  have  as 
sumed.  Logically  they  should  have  realized  the 
danger  of  education,  and  had  they  retained  know- 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     171 

ledge  in  the  hands  of  the  Puritan  hierarchy  the 
Puritan  theocracy  would  have  lived  longer.  "In 
this  energetic  diffusion  of  knowledge  they  were 
unwittingly  preparing  the  complete  and  irreparable 
destruction  of  the  theocratic  ideal  of  society  which 
they  had  sought  to  realize  by  crossing  the  ocean 
and  settling  in  New  England.  This  universal  edu 
cation  and  this  perpetual  discussion  of  theological 
questions  were  no  more  compatible  with  rigid 
adherence  to  the  Calvinistic  system  than  with 
submission  to  the  absolute  rule  of  Rome.  The 
inevitable  result  was  the  liberal  and  enlightened 
Protestanism  which  is  characteristic  of  the  best 
American  society  at  the  present  day,  and  which 
is  continually  growing  more  liberal  as  it  grows 
enlightened."  1 

But  a  long  period  elapsed  before  this  era  of  "lib 
eral  and  enlightened  Protestantism"  was  reached, 
and  in  that  interval  Puritan  theocracy  was  marked 
by  all  the  bigotry,  superstition,  and  cruelty  that 
in  that  day  were  inseparable  from  religion  and 
which  to-day  seem  to  reflect  upon  the  Puritan  char 
acter.  While  the  Puritan  did  not  rise  above  the 
spirit  of  his  age,  he  did  not  sink  below  it. 

The  Puritans  began  by  denying  citizenship  to 
those  who  were  not  members  of  the  church,  which 
was  quite  natural  from  their  standpoint,  but  soon 
opposition  arose  to  a  religious  test.  Thomas 
Hooker,  a  Cambridge  graduate  and  an  ordained 

1  Fiske:  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  151. 


172          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

clergyman  of  the  Church  of  England,  may  not 
inappropriately  be  called  the  father  of  American 
democracy.  "Government  rests  on  the  free  con 
sent  of  the  governed"  and  "government  of  the 
people,  by  the  people,  for  the  people,"  are  simply 
paraphrases  of  his  declaration  that  "the  founda 
tion  of  authority  is  laid  in  the  free  consent  of  the 
people,"  which  with  the  further  declaration,  "they 
who  have  the  power  to  appoint  officers  and  magis 
trates,  have  the  right  to  set  the  bounds  and  limita 
tions  of  the  power  and  place  of  those  who  are 
called,"  are  the  foundation  on  which,  a  century  and 
a  half  later,  the  American  Constitution  was  reared. 
Hooker,  a  rebel  among  rebels,  led  a  band  to  Con 
necticut,  where  he  founded  a  colony  and  a  written 
constitution  was  adopted,1  which,  like  the  American 
Constitution,  prescribes  no  religious  test.  This 
movement  had  great  influence  on  the  older  colony 
of  Massachusetts,  which  modified  the  religious  qual 
ification  for  the  right  of  suffrage,  and  eventually 
abolished  it. 

But  before  that  golden  day  dawned  bigotry  was 
long  to  remain  enthroned. 

Historians  have  delighted  to  heap  obloquy  upon 
the  Puritans  for  their  persecution  of  the  Quakers, 
just  as  they  gleefully  relate  the  whipping  of  Obadiah 
Holmes,  the  Baptist,  who  had  the  temerity  to  go  to 
Lynn  to  give  a  dying  brother  consolation,  as  evi 
dence  of  Puritan  intolerance. 

1  See  p.  340. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     173 

That  persecution  requires  no  apology  from  the 
impartial  historian,  for  men  are  to  be  judged  not 
by  the  moral  statutes  of  the  present,  but  their 
actions  are  to  be  weighed  in  the  scales  of  the  time 
in  which  they  lived  and  the  then  existing  state  of 
morals.  It  is  as  great  an  anachronism  to  apply 
the  twentieth-century  test  of  morals  to  the  seven 
teenth  as  it  would  be  absurd  to  blame  the  Puritans 
for  being  content  with  the  discomforts  of  the  pine 
torch  instead  of  using  the  electric  light.  That  they 
would  have  used  the  electric  light  if  it  had  been 
known  to  them  we  may  feel  sure,  and  we  may  with 
equal  certainty  convince  ourselves  that  their  moral 
attitude  would  have  been  that  of  to-day  had  the 
morality  of  the  twentieth  century  been  invented  in 
the  seventeenth.  That  time  had  not  yet  come. 

The  Puritans  persecuted  the  Quakers  and  drove 
forth  Roger  Williams,  who  had  already  been  driven 
out  of  England  by  Laud,  for  the  very  simple  reason 
that  all  society  was  founded  on  persecution,  and  he 
who  differed  from  the  majority  and  was  courageous 
enough  or  foolish  enough  to  challenge  the  estab- 
blished  order,  whether  in  church  or  state,  was  to  be 
tortured  or  put  to  death.  In  that  tremendous  con 
flict  which  made  Europe  for  centuries  one  vast 
house  of  mourning  in  the  name  of  religion,  its 
champions  sincerely  and  honestly  believed  with  all 
the  intensity  of  besotted  ignorance  that  their  faith 
was  alone  the  true  faith,  and  that  those  who  would 
not  accept  conversion  and  who  remained  stubborn 


174          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

in  their  obstinacy  after  the  persuasion  of  the  torture 
chamber  were  better  dead.  Between  Philip  II  of 
Spain  and  Luther  and  Calvin  and  Paul  IV  there  is 
nothing  in  common  except  the  common  belief  in 
the  punishment  of  the  heretic.  "  Each  side,"  as  Lea 
so  forcibly  puts  it,  "was  equally  sure  that  it  alone 
possessed  the  true  faith,  wThich  was  to  be  vindicated 
with  fire  and  sword.  If  the  canon  law  required 
sovereigns  to  put  heretics  to  death,  Luther,  in  1528, 
subscribed  to  a  declaration  of  the  Wittenberg  theo 
logians  prescribing  the  same  fate  for  those  whom 
they  classed  as  such.  If  Paul  IV,  in  1555,  declared 
that  all  who  denied  the  Trinity  should  be  pitilessly 
burned,  he  but  followed  the  example  that  Calvin 
had  set  two  years  before.  If  France  had  her  feast 
of  Saint  Bartholomew,  Germany  had  led  the  way 
in  the  slaughter  of  the  Anabaptists.  If  Spain  had 
her  inquisition,  England,  in  1550,  under  the  re 
forming  Edward  VI,  created  a  similar  organization 
with  Cranmer  at  its  head."  In  all  that  long  struggle 
for  what  has  with  unconscious  and  grim  irony  been 
called  freedom  of  conscience,  men  only  asked  for 
freedom  to  enslave  the  consciences  of  others,  in 
spired  often  by  what  they  believed  to  be  the  highest 
and  purest  motives,  but  blind  to  their  own  tyranny. 
Because  of  our  inability  to  absorb  the  spirit  of  a 
bygone  age,  we  are  too  apt  to  regard  the  persecu 
tion  of  Protestant  and  Catholic  and  the  savage 
crimes  committed  in  the  name  of  religion  as  proof 
that  cruelty  was  practiced  for  the  sole  delight  that 


THE   PURITAN  CONSTITUTION     175 

man  perverted  derived  from  witnessing  suffering, 
and  that  the  agony  of  the  victims  of  the  rack  and 
the  thumbscrew  was  music  to  brutal  and  bestial 
natures;  just  as  the  North  American  Indian  often 
tortured  his  white  captives  for  the  mere  pleasure 
of  gloating  over  their  pain.  In  this  we  do  fanatics 
and  zealots  an  injustice.  There  were  of  course 
many  violent  and  passionate  men  who  took  as  keen 
delight  in  inflicting  torture  as  the  average  man, 
humanized  and  softened  by  contact  with  his  fellow- 
men  and  the  refining  influences  that  come  from  an 
orderly  and  well-regulated  system  of  society,  now 
takes  in  relieving  suffering  and  endeavoring  to  pre 
vent  it;  but  the  great  majority  who  maimed  and 
slew  for  the  glory  of  religion  believed  in  their  mis 
sion,  and  were  sustained  by  the  thought  that  they 
were  carrying  on  the  work  for  which  they  were 
anointed. 

Had  the  Puritans  of  New  England  treated  the 
Quakers  otherwise  than  in  the  way  they  did,  we 
might  well  believe  in  the  theory  of  "miracle"  set 
up  by  their  over-zealous  but  injudicious  defenders 
and  find  proof  that  they  were  touched  by  the  divine 
spark;  but  the  fact  that  the  Puritans  went  about 
their  congenial  work  of  hanging  and  flogging  and 
imprisoning  is  evidence  enough  to  the  impartial 
investigator  that  the  Englishman  in  Massachusetts 
was  no  different  from  the  Englishman  in  London 
or  Lincolnshire.  Quakers  were  put  to  death  on 
Boston  Common  for  the  same  reason  that  the  fires 


176          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

had  been  lighted  under  the  bodies  of  Protestants 
in  Smithfield  Market.  Salvation  was  free,  it  was 
offered  with  outstretched  hands  to  whoever  would 
embrace  it,  but  it  must  be  salvation  of  the  approved 
brand.  Whoever  was  presumptuous  enough  to 
crave  a  different  brand  of  salvation  from  that  which 
the  ruling  powers  regarded  as  their  own  monopoly 
was  a  traitor  to  God  and  man.  And  God  was 
always  invoked  to  justify  every  vile  impulse.  What 
abominable  hypocrisy  it  seems  to  praise  God  for 
an  epidemic  of  smallpox  which  swept  away  the 
Indians,  but  to  the  conscience  of  the  seventeenth 
century  it  was  a  mark  of  divine  favor.  In  1633  the 
Aberginians  near  Charles  town  were  sorely  stricken, 
and  thus  piously  writes  a  Puritan  who  saw  in 
everything  the  hand  of  God:  — 

"By  which  awful  and  admirable  dispensation  it 
pleased  God  to  make  room  for  his  people  of  the 
English  nation;  who,  after  this,  in  the  immediate 
years  following,  came  from  England  by  many  hun 
dreds  every  year  to  us,  who,  without  this  remark 
able  and  terrible  stroke  of  God  upon  the  natives, 
would  with  much  more  difficulty  have  found  room, 
and  at  far  greater  charge  have  obtained  and  pur 
chased  land." 

Excuses  have  been  found  for  the  Puritan  persecu 
tion  of  the  Quakers.  We  have  been  told  that  they 
offended  the  sober  taste  of  the  Puritans  by  their 
extravagance  and  indecency  in  dress;  that  their 
manners  and  speech  were  offensive;  that  they  made 


THE  PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     177 

sport  of  religion  and  sought  to  overthrow  civil 
institutions;  that  women  shocked  public  morality 
by  appearing  in  public  places  clothed  in  the  gar 
ments  of  original  sin.  Stern  as  the  Puritans  were 
in  their  morality,  it  was  no  shock  to  their  moral 
nature  to  look  upon  women  naked  in  the  hands  of 
the  executioners.  Women  bared  to  the  waist  had 
been  flogged  through  the  streets,  other  women  had 
been  stripped  naked  for  examination.  It  was  not  a 
day  when  the  offender  was  treated  with  considera 
tion  or  pains  were  taken  not  to  wound  his  feelings. 
The  Puritan  treatment  of  the  Quakers  was  brutal 
in  the  extreme,  unthinkable  in  this  day,  but  exactly 
in  keeping  with  the  day  in  which  it  happened.1 

In  1656  Anne  Austin  and  Mary  Fisher  came  to 
Boston  from  the  Barbadoes,  and  Richard  Belling- 
ham,  the  deputy  governor,  arrested  them  and  kept 
them  in  prison  for  five  weeks  until  a  ship  was 
ready  to  return  them  whence  they  came.  Soon  after 
their  departure,  the  stern  and  fanatical  Endicott 
returned  home.  He  found  fault  with  Bellingham's 
conduct  as  too  gentle;  "if  he  had  been  there  he 
would  have  had  the  hussies  flogged.  Five  years 
afterwards  Mary  Fisher  went  to  Adrianople  and 

1  I  have  not  considered  it  necessary  to  cite  specific  instances  of  Quaker 
persecution  or  the  numerous  statutes  directed  against  these  pestiferous  ene 
mies  of  the  theocratic  state,  as  the  general  fact  is  too  well  known  to  the  student 
of  early  American  history ;  but  the  curious  reader  who  seeks  more  light  on  the 
subject  may  read  with  interest  Elliott's  New  England  History,  Sewell's  His 
tory  of  the  Quakers,  Hallowell's  Quaker  Invasion  of  Massachusetts,  Bishop's 
New  England  Judged  by  the  Spirit  of  the  Lord,  Besse's  Sufferings  of  the 
Quakers. 


178          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tried  to  convert  the  Grand  Turk,  who  treated  her 
with  grave  courtesy  and  allowed  her  to  prophesy 
unmolested.  This  is  one  of  the  numerous  incidents 
that  on  a  superficial  view  of  history  might  be  cited 
in  support  of  the  opinion  that  there  has  been  on  the 
whole  more  tolerance  in  the  Mussulman  than  in 
the  Christian  world.  Rightly  interpreted,  however, 
the  fact  has  no  such  implication.  In  Massachusetts 
the  preaching  of  Quaker  doctrines  might  (and  did) 
lead  to  a  revolution;  in  Turkey  it  was  as  harmless 
as  the  barking  of  dogs.  Governor  Endicott  was 
afraid  of  Mary  Fisher;  Mahomet  IV  was  not."  1 

On  all  fours  with  the  persecution  of  the  Quakers 
the  Puritan  treatment  of  witches  and  witchcraft, 
and  the  happenings  that  have  made  Salem  world- 
famous  when  much  more  important  places  are 
unknown,  is  a  stone  always  cast  by  the  ignorant 
defamers  of  Puritanism.  "Writers  who  dislike 
Puritanism  have  rubbed  the  sad  old  story  into  the 
sore  place  unmercifully,  as  if  the  colonists  at  Salem 
ought  to  have  been  superior  to  the  ideas  of  their 
age."2  Professor  Kittredge,  in  his  "Notes  on 
Witchcraft," 3  holds  a  brief  for  the  men  of  Salem  and 
by  a  plea  of  confession  and  avoidance  argues  that 
instead  of  being  worse  than  their  kinsmen  at  home 
they  were  really  better.  Here  again  it  is  not  neces 
sary  to  seek  excuses.  Belief  in  evil  spirits,  in  the 
league  between  the  devil  and  his  agents  in  human 

1  Fiske:  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  183. 

3  Lang:  Salem  Vindicated,  London  Morning  Post,  October  18,  1907. 

*  American  Antiquarian  Society,  new  series,  vol.  xviii,  p.  148. 


THE  PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     179 

form,  in  necromancy,  witchcraft,  and  black  magic 
existed  from  the  dawn  of  creation  until  long  after 
the  Puritans  set  foot  on  New  England  soil.  It  was 
a  belief  confined  not  alone  to  the  ignorant  or  the 
superstitious;  it  was  shared  by  some  of  the  most 
learned  and  subtle  minds  of  the  day.  The  Puritan 
had  only  to  turn  to  his  constitution  to  read  there  the 
punishment  to  be  meted  out  to  witches  and  those 
who  practiced  witchcraft.  "Thou  shalt  not  suffer 
a  witch  to  live,"  was  one  of  the  divine  command 
ments;1  and  again  the  Puritan  read  that  "there 
shall  not  be  found  among  you  any  one  that  maketh 
his  son  or  his  daughter  to  pass  through  the  fire,  or 
that  useth  divination,  or  an  observer  of  times,  or  an 
enchanter,  or  a  witch."  2  Of  Manasseh  the  Puritan 
read  that  "he  caused  his  children  to  pass  through 
the  fire  in  the  valley  of  the  son  of  Hinnom :  also  he 
observed  times,  and  used  enchantments,  and  used 
witchcraft,  and  dealt  with  a  familiar  spirit,  and 
with  wizards :  he  wrought  much  evil  in  the  sight  of 
the  Lord,  to  provoke  him  to  anger."3 

The  belief  in  witchcraft  was  not  confined  to  any 
one  people  or  to  any  particular  religion;  it  was  as 
profoundly  a  conviction  among  the  poor  and  un 
lettered  as  it  was  among  the  rich  and  learned.  In 
the  reigns  of  Henry  VIII,  Edward  VI,  Elizabeth, 
and  James  I  statutes  against  witches  were  enacted 
in  England ;  on  the  continent  witches  were  tortured 

1  Exodus  xxii,  18.  3  Deuteronomy  xviii,  10. 

3  2  Chronicles  xxxiii,  6. 


180          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  burned.  One  has  only  to  recall  the  fate  of  the 
Maid  of  Orleans,  who  "heard  voices"  and  was  sup 
posed  to  be  in  communion  with  the  spirits  of  dark 
ness.  Men  of  such  profound  minds  as  Sir  Matthew 
Hale  and  Sir  Thomas  Browne  and  that  great  legal 
writer,  Blackstone,  believed  in  witchcraft,  and  so 
did  the  gentle  John  Wesley  and  Martin  Luther. 
Mather,  as  might  have  been  expected,  was  con 
vinced  that  the  devil  assumed  human  form.1 
"Flashy  people,"  he  says  with  scorn,  "may  bur 
lesque  these  things,  but  when  hundreds  of  the  most 
sober  people  in  a  country,  where  they  have  as  much 
mother-wit  certainly  as  the  rest  of  mankind,  know 
them  to  be  true,  nothing  but  the  absurd  and  fro- 
ward  spirit  of  Sadducism  can  question  them." 2  We 
have  no  exact  statistics,  but  probably  not  more  than 
a  dozen  people  were  put  to  death  in  New  England 
on  the  charge  of  witchcraft  (some  writers,  however, 
estimate  the  number  as  high  as  thirty),  while  Fisher,3 
in  his  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  says  that 
prior  to  the  witchcraft  epidemic  in  Massachusetts 
30,000  persons  were  put  to  death  in  England, 
75,000  in  France,  and  100,000  in  Germany.  In 
credible  almost  as  these  figures  appear,  there  is 
reason  to  believe  they  are  not  exaggerated.  Between 
1580  and  1680  there  are  said  to  have  been  3400 
executions  in  Scotland,  and  in  a  single  year,  1645- 

1  Magnolia,  vol.  i,  p.  186  et  seq.,  and  vol.  ii,  p.  388  et  seq. 

2  Magnolia,  vol.  i,  p.  187. 

8  Fisher:  History  of  the  Christian  Church,  pp.  479-483. 


THE  PURITAN   CONSTITUTION     181 

1646,  in  one  of  the  eastern  counties  of  England, 
200  persons  were  put  to  death  because  they  were 
accused  of  practicing  the  black  art.  It  was  often  a 
convenient  way  of  disposing  of  an  obnoxious  person. 
It  was  easy  enough  to  find  evidence  to  support  a 
prima-facie  case,  and  the  burden  of  proof  was  not 
on  the  prosecutor,  but  it  was  the  accused  witch  who 
had  to  bring  evidence  in  the  vain  hope  of  being  able 
to  prove  a  negative.  Before  a  packed  court  and  a 
prejudiced  jury  the  instances  of  the  acquittal  of 
witches  are  so  rare  as  scarcely  to  be  noted.  When  a 
case  could  be  proved  by  the  admission  of  "spectral 
evidence,"  conviction  was  always  certain. 

A  distinguished  American  writer,  Brooks  Adams, 
has  reflected  more  harshly  on  Massachusetts  than 
even  the  most  biased  foreign  critic.  Writing  of  the 
court  created  to  try  the  witches,  which  was  pre 
sided  over  by  William  Stoughton,  he  says:  "Even 
now  it  is  impossible  to  read  the  proceedings  of  this 
sanguinary  tribunal  without  a  shudder,  and  it  has 
left  a  stain  upon  the  judiciary  of  Massachusetts 
that  can  never  be  effaced  " ;  *  and  again  he  says : 
"Stoughton  was  already  at  work,  and  certain 
death  awaited  all  who  were  dragged  before  that 
cruel  and  bloodthirsty  bigot;  even  when  the  jury 
acquitted,  the  court  refused  to  receive  the  verdict. 
The  accounts  given  of  the  legal  proceedings  seem 
monstrous." 2  Later,  somewhat  grudgingly,  it  would 

1  Adams:  The  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts,  p.  225. 
3  Op.  cU.t  p.  266. 


182          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

seem,  he  finds  excuse  for  these  monstrous  pro 
ceedings,  for  in  a  brief  note  1  he  retracts  much  that 
he  has  previously  written  and  is  able  to  extenuate 
what  Massachusetts  did.  "In  England,"  he  says, 
"throughout  the  eighteenth  century,  counsel  were 
allowed  to  speak  in  criminal  trials,  in  cases  of  trea 
son  and  misdemeanor  only.  Nor  is  the  conduct  of 
Massachusetts  in  regard  to  witches  peculiar.  Paral 
lel  atrocities  might  probably  be  adduced  from  the 
history  of  every  European  nation,  even  though  the 
procedure  of  the  courts  were  more  regular  than  was 
that  of  the  Commission  of  Phips.  The  relation  of 
the  priest  to  the  sorcerer  is  a  most  interesting  phe 
nomenon  of  social  development;  but  it  would  re 
quire  a  treatise  by  itself." 

Another  count  in  the  indictment  brought  against 
the  Puritan  is  the  ferocity  with  which  he  warred 
against  the  Indians  and  the  "Cromwellian  thorough 
ness"  with  which  he  used  the  sword  and  the  torch. 
It  is  only  necessary  to  admit  the  truth,  but  no  ex 
cuses  are  needed.  It  was  a  day  of  stern  reprisals, 
when  lex  talionis  was  the  code  observed  by  men  in 
Old  England  as  well  as  in  New  England,  in  all 
parts  of  the  world  wherever  the  sword  was  drawn 
and  the  fiery  cross  was  raised.  When  white  men 
warred  against  men  of  their  race  they  found  it 
more  convenient  to  put  their  captives  to  death 
than  to  make  them  prisoners,  and  as  a  military  and 
economic  measure  it  was  often  impossible  for  the 
1  Op.  tit.,  p.  310. 


THE   PURITAN   CONSTITUTION    183 

victor  to  burden  himself  with  a  defeated  army.  In 
making  war  against  savages  extermination  was  the 
object  sought  to  be  attained,  and  no  consideration 
of  humanity  softened  the  unloosed  wrath.  To  have 
been  merciful  would  have  been  regarded  as  a  sign  of 
weakness.  The  Indians  were  killed  to  strike  terror 
in  the  hearts  of  other  tribes,  exactly  as  sepoys  were 
blown  from  the  muzzles  of  cannon  after  the  Indian 
Mutiny.  It  was  punishment  swift  and  horrible,  but 
all  punishment,  to  be  effective,  must  act  as  a  deter 
rent  to  the  living.  It  was  effective. 


CHAPTER  XII 

THE  PURITAN  HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH 

IN  continuation  of  the  purpose  of  previous  chap 
ters  to  clear  away  the  fiction  that  has  grown  up 
about  the  character  of  the  Puritan  and  present  him 
as  he  really  was,  because,  as  I  have  already  pointed 
out,  of  the  importance  of  a  proper  interpretation 
of  the  Puritan  if  the  character  of  the  present-day 
American  is  to  be  correctly  understood,  it  becomes 
necessary  briefly  to  consider  the  Puritan  in  his  home. 
Fiction  has  given  us  the  sombre-clad  man  and 
woman,  to  whom  color  was  hateful,  enjoyment  of 
recreation  an  abomination  in  the  sight  of  the  Lord, 
and  discomfort  and  voluntary  hardship  evidence 
of  a  saintly  nature,  who  by  his  transplanting  to 
America  lost  his  sense  of  innocent  pleasure  and  be 
came  a  different  being  from  what  he  had  been  in 
England.  A  careful  reading  of  the  chronicles  of 
those  days  fails  to  reveal  any  evidence  of  this  trans 
formation.  That  the  Puritan  both  in  England  and 
America  was  austere  and  looked  with  disgust  upon 
the  licentiousness  that  prevailed  both  in  the  church 
and  society  we  know  and  has  already  been  referred 
to,  but  the  Puritan  by  his  passage  across  the  At 
lantic  did  not  become  a  man  of  gloom  or  frown 
upon  the  things  that  constituted  the  pleasures  of 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  185 

those  days.  He  did  not  deliberately  mortify  the 
flesh.  We  can  find  no  testimony  that  he  wore  a 
hair  shirt  or  found  delight  in  self-inflicted  pain. 
Austere  he  was,  and  yet  he  loved  his  wife  and  was 
affectionate  to  his  children,  although  his  affection 
did  not  find  expression  in  exuberant  demonstration. 
This  is  interesting  in  contrast  with  the  modern 
American,  who  has  little  restraint,  and  whose  emo 
tions  are  vivid  and  quickly  reached.  It  is  another 
of  those  cumulative  proofs  to  the  student  of  Ameri 
can  character  that  the  American  is  not  a  hybrid 
Englishman  but  is  the  product  of  a  new  race,  a 
race  that  has  been  produced  by  the  forces  of  nature 
and  the  social  and  political  institutions  which  he 
has  created  to  satisfy  the  demands  of  his  own  nature 
instead  of  accepting  those  that  belonged  to  another 
race  in  different  environments. 

Those  famous  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut,  which 
all  the  world  long  believed  in,  never  existed  except 
in  the  luxuriant  imagination  of  Rev.  Samuel  Peters, 
who  had  been  driven  out  of  America  during  the 
Revolution  and  took  this  ingenious  means  of  grati 
fying  his  revenge.  Women  were  not  forbidden  to 
kiss  their  children  on  the  Sabbath;  they  were  not 
prohibited  from  making  "minced  pies";  it  was  fic 
tion  and  not  truth  that  "no  one  should  play  on  any 
instrument  of  music  except  the  drum,  trumpet,  or 
jew's-harp."  *  A  somewhat  malevolent  person  this 

1  Peters:    A  General  History  of  Connecticut,  p.  71.  Cf.  Palfrey,  vol.  ii, 
p.  32,  n.;  p.  375;  Trumbull:  Blue  Laws,  True  and  False. 


186          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

clergyman,  who  was  denied  the  pleasure  of  knowing 
how  much  mischief  he  caused. 

The  modern  idea  of  the  Puritan  is  that  he  was 
the  barbarian  of  his  times,  rude  in  his  manner  of 
living  and  uncultured.  But  this  we  know  to  be 
incorrect.  The  Puritanism  of  the  first  forty  years 
of  the  seventeenth  century,  Palfrey  says,  was  not 
tainted  with  degrading  or  ungraceful  associations 
of  any  sort.  "  The  rank,  the  wealth,  the  chivalry, 
the  genius,  the  learning,  the  accomplishments,  the 
social  refinements  and  elegance  of  the  time  were 
largely  represented  in  its  ranks.  Not  to  speak  of 
Scotland,  where  soon  Puritanism  had  few  oppo 
nents  in  the  class  of  the  high-born  and  the  educated, 
the  severity  of  Elizabeth  scarcely  restrained,  in  her 
latter  days,  its  predominance  among  the  most  ex 
alted  orders  of  her  subjects.  The  Earls  of  Leicester, 
Bedford,  Huntington,  and  Warwick,  Sir  Nicholas 
Bacon,  his  greater  son,  Walsingham,  Burleigh, 
Mildmay,  Sadler,  Knollys,  were  specimens  of  a  host 
of  eminent  men  more  or  less  friendly  to  or  toler 
ant  of  it.  Throughout  the  reign  of  James  the  First 
it  controlled  the  House  of  Commons,  composed 
chiefly  of  the  landed  gentry  of  the  kingdom;  and, 
if  it  had  less  sway  among  the  peers,  this  was  partly 
because  the  number  of  lay  nobles  did  not  largely 
exceed  that  of  the  Bishops,  who  were  mostly 
creatures  of  the  Crown.  The  aggregate  property  of 
the  Puritan  House  of  Commons  of  1692  was  com 
puted  to  be  three  times  as  great  as  that  of  the  Lords, 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  187 

according  to  Hume.  The  statesmen  of  the  first 
period  of  that  Parliament  which  by  and  by  de 
throned  Charles  the  First  had  been  bred  in  the 
luxury  of  the  landed  aristocracy  of  the  realm; 
while  of  the  nobility,  Manchester,  Essex,  Warwick, 
Brooke,  Fairfax,  and  others,  and  of  the  gentry  a 
long  roll  of  men  of  the  scarcely  inferior  position  of 
Hampden  and  Waller,  commanded  and  officered  its 
armies  and  fleets.  A  Puritan  was  the  first  Protes 
tant  founder  of  a  college  at  an  English  university. 
"  It  may  be  easily  believed  that  none  of  the  guests 
whom  the  Earl  of  Leicester  placed  at  his  table  by 
the  side  of  his  nephew,  Sir  Philip  Sidney,  were 
clowns.  But  the  supposition  of  any  necessary  con 
nection  between  Puritanism  and  what  is  harsh  and 
rude  in  taste  and  manners  will  not  stand  the  test 
of  even  an  observation  of  the  character  of  the  men 
who  figured  in  its  ranks,  when  the  lines  came  to  be 
most  distinctly  drawn.  The  Parliamentary  general, 
Devereux,  Earl  of  Essex,  was  no  strait-laced  gos- 
peler,  but  a  man  formed  with  every  grace  of  per 
son,  mind,  and  culture  to  be  the  ornament  of  a 
splendid  court,  the  model  knight,  the  idol,  as 
long  as  he  was  the  comrade,  of  the  royal  soldiery, 
the  Bayard  of  the  time.  The  position  of  Manches 
ter  and  Fairfax,  of  Hollis,  Fiennes,  and  Pierrepont, 
was  by  birthright  in  the  most  polished  circles  of 
English  society.  In  the  memoirs  of  the  young  regi 
cide,  Colonel  Hutchinson,  recorded  by  his  beautiful 
and  high-souled  wife,  we  may  look  at  the  interior 


188          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  a  Puritan  household,  and  see  its  graces,  divine 
and  human,  as  they  shone  with  a  naturally  blended 
lustre  in  the  most  strenuous  and  most  afflicted 
times.  The  renown  of  English  learning  owes  some 
thing  to  the  sect  which  enrolled  the  names  of  Sel- 
don,  Lightfoot,  Gale,  and  Owen.  Its  seriousness 
and  depth  of  thought  had  lent  their  inspiration  to 
the  delicate  muse  of  Spenser.  Judging  between 
their  colleague  preachers,  Traver  and  Hooker,  the 
critical  Templars  awarded  the  palm  of  scholarly 
eloquence  to  the  Puritan.  When  the  Puritan  lawyer 
Whitelock  was  ambassador  to  Queen  Christina,  he 
kept  a  magnificent  state,  which  was  the  admiration 
of  her  court,  perplexed  as  they  were  by  his  per 
sistent  Puritanical  testimony  against  the  practice  of 
drinking  healths.  For  his  Latin  secretary,  the  Puri 
tan  Protector  employed  a  man  at  once  equal  to  the 
foremost  of  mankind  in  genius  and  learning,  and 
skilled  in  all  manly  exercises,  proficient  in  the 
lighter  accomplishments  beyond  any  other  English 
man  of  his  day,  and  caressed  in  his  youth,  in  France 
and  Italy,  for  eminence  in  the  studies  of  their  fas 
tidious  scholars  and  artists.  The  king's  camp  and 
court  at  Oxford  had  not  a  better  swordsman  or  ama 
teur  musician  than  John  Milton,  and  his  portraits 
exhibit  him  with  locks  as  flowing  as  Prince  Rupert's. 
In  such  trifles  as  the  fashion  of  apparel,  the  usage 
of  the  best  modern  society  vindicates,  in  character 
istic  particulars,  the  Roundhead  judgment  and  the 
taste  of  the  century  before  the  last.  The  English 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  189 

gentleman  now,  as  the  Puritan  gentleman  then, 
dresses  plainly  in  'sad'  colors,  and  puts  his  lace 
and  embroidery  on  his  servants." l 

The  Puritan  was  terrifically  in  earnest;  he  be 
came  self-centred,  and  was  more  influenced  by  that 
which  he  had  within  him  than  he  was  by  the  sense 
of  exterior  impression,  but  just  a  little  more  of  that 
gracious  spark  of  humanity  and  he  would  have 
given  birth  to  a  race  of  poets  instead  of  a  race  of 
business  men.  And  some  were.  There  was  Milton, 
the  great  poet  of  the  Puritans  and  one  of  the  great 
est  names  in  English  literature ;  and  the  prose  writ 
ings  of  the  leaders  of  Puritan  thought  are  full  of 
poetic  expression  and  the  flash  of  imagination. 
The  clearest  insight  into  a  man's  character  is  to  be 
gained  from  his  letters  to  his  wife,  for  the  intimacy, 
the  unrestraint  of  conventional  expression,  the 
revelation  of  aspirations,  the  word  of  affection,  that 
mean  so  much  to  two  persons  in  perfect  sympathy, 
reveal  the  natural  man,  the  man  as  he  was  and  not 
as  his  biographer  would  make  him.  The  reader 
who  doubts  the  human  quality  in  the  Puritan  may 
study  with  profit,  and  with  even  greater  pleasure, 
the  letters  of  John  Winthrop  to  his  wife. 

They  are  admirable  letters,  full  of  sentiment  and 
graceful  allusion,  with  constant  reference  to  the 
goodness  of  God  and  much  practical  advice  to  his 
son.  But  what  particularly  appeals  to  me,  because 
it  so  conspicuously  disproves  the  popular  belief 

1  Palfrey:  History  of  New  England,  vol.  i,  pp.  278-282. 


190          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

that  natural  affection  was  crushed  out  of  the  Puri 
tan,  are  the  lover-like  expressions  used  by  this  man 
who  had  long  passed  his  first  youth.  "It  grieves 
me,"  he  writes,  "that  I  have  not  liberty  to  make 
better  expression  of  my  love  to  thee,  who  art  more 
dear  to  me  than  all  earthly  things."  He  closes  a 
letter,  as  many  a  modern  lover  has  written  to  his 
beloved,  "so  I  kisse  my  sweet  wife,  and  thinke 
longe  till  I  see  thee."  Puritan  though  he  was, 
there  was  enough  of  the  pagan  in  him  to  know  the 
universal  language  of  love ;  for  in  a  postscript  writ 
ten  on  February  14,  1629,  he  says,  "thou  must  be 
my  valentine,  for  none  hath  challenged  me."  His 
common  salutation  to  his  wife  was  "mine  own 
sweet  Self,"  or  "mine  own  dear  Heart";  and  there 
are  letters  beginning  with  such  extravagance  of 
affection  as  "Mine  owne,  mine  onely,  my  best  Be 
loved,"  and  "  My  Love,  my  Joy,  my  Faithful  One."1 

To  understand  the  family  and  home  life  of  the 
Puritan,  the  biography  of  Colonel  Hutchinson,  one 
of  the  regicides,  who  "could  dance  admirably  well" 
and  "  had  a  great  love  of  music,"  as  his  widow 
records,  may  be  read  with  satisfaction. 

"We  are  wont  to  think  of  our  Puritan  forbears," 
an  American  writer  says,  "indeed  we  are  deter 
mined  to  think  of  them,  garbed  in  sombre-colored 
garments,  in  a  life  devoid  of  color,  warmth,  or 
fragrance.  But  sad  color  was  not  dismal  and  dull 
save  in  name;  it  was  brown  in  tone,  and  brown  is 

1  Winthrop:  Life  and  Letters  of  John  Winthrop. 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  191 

warm,  and  being  a  primitive  color  is,  like  many 
primitive  things,  cheerful.  Old  England  was  garbed 
in  hearty  honest  russet,  even  in  the  days  of  our 
colonization.  Read  the  list  of  the  garments  of  any 
master  of  the  manor,  of  the  English  yeoman,  of  our 
own  sturdy  English  emigrants  from  manor  and  farm 
in  Suffolk  and  Essex.  What  did  they  wear  across 
seas?  What  did  they  wear  in  the  New  World? 
What  they  wore  in  England."  * 

They  wore  doublets  and  breeches  of  brown 
leather  (brown,  not  gray),  buff  coats,  russet  hose. 
These  people  had  an  eye  for  color  and  did  not 
despise  it.  We  read  of  "  Wastecoats  of  greene  cot 
ton  bound  about  with  red  tape,"  of  waistcoats  dyed 
red  with  stammel,  and  of  the  colonists  writing  to 
England  for  "  stammel  dyes."  In  England,  in  1586, 
Philip  Stubbes  published  "  an  Anatomic  of  Abuses." 
He  was  the  typical  Puritan  of  imagination — austere, 
severe,  a  hater  of  the  follies  and  wickedness  of  his 
times.  He  thundered  against  extravagance  in  dress, 
but  it  was  the  extravagance  of  those  persons  who 
dressed  beyond  their  means,  and  not  the  condem 
nation  of  the  rich  who  could  properly  gratify  their 
tastes.  Just  as  to-day  our  social  reformers  preach 
a  crusade  against  the  men  who  go  into  debt  to 
maintain  their  pretensions,  so  Stubbes  censured 
"Excesse  in  apparell"  where  it  was  not  justified. 
"I  would  not  be  so  understood,"  he  quaintly  writes, 

1  Earle:  Two  Centuries  of  Costume  in  America,  vol.  i,  p.  4;  cf.  Palfrey: 
History  of  New  England,  ii,  p.  63  et  seq. 


192          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

"as  though  my  speeches  extended  to  any  either 
noble  honourable  or  worshipful;  for  I  am  farre 
from  once  thinking  that  any  kind  of  sumptuous 
or  Gorgeous  Attire  is  not  to  be  worn  of  them; 
as  I  suppose  them  rather  Ornaments  in  them 
than  otherwise.  And  therefore  when  I  speak 
of  excess  of  Apparel  my  meaning  is  of  the  in- 
feriour  sorte  only  who  for  the  most  parte  do  farre 
surpasse  either  noble  honourable  or  worshipful, 
ruffling  in  silks,  Velvets,  Satins,  Damaske,  Taf- 
feties,  Gold,  Silver  and  what  not;  these  bee  the 
Abuses  I  speake  of,  these  bee  the  Evils  that  I 
lament,  and  these  bee  the  persons  my  words  doe 
concern." 

In  the  day  of  the  Puritan,  and  long  before  he 
came  to  America,  and  long  after  America  had 
ceased  to  be  Puritan  and  become  American,  dress 
betokened  rank.  It  had  a  significance  then  which 
it  has  long  since  lost.  Social  station  and  official 
position  were  marked  by  the  clothes  that  men  wore. 
It  was  contrary  to  the  spirit  of  the  age  and  class 
distinction  that  master  and  servant  should  sar- 
torially  find  the  same  common  expression,  for  if  the 
master  were  not  distinguished  from  the  servant  by 
the  richness  of  his  apparel,  it  might  well  be  that  a 
stranger  should  address  the  servant  thinking  he  was 
holding  speech  with  the  master,  and  that  would 
be  to  make  the  master  ridiculous  and  destroy  disci 
pline.  The  Puritan  was  in  essence  a  Democrat,  but 
democracy  did  not  mean  to  him  the  destruction  of 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  193 

class  distinction  that  tended  to  the  destruction  of 
society. 

Early  in  the  history  of  the  Massachusetts  Colony 
sumptuary  laws  were  enacted,  \vhich  were  in  keep 
ing  with  the  general  concept  of  the  Puritan  theory 
of  government  that  the  lives  and  morals  and  man 
ners  of  the  people  were  not  subject  to  the  whim 
of  the  individual,  but  were  to  be  regulated  by  the 
combined  wisdom  and  experience  of  society.  As 
it  was  in  religion  so  it  was  in  dress.  The  Puritans 
welcomed  no  creed  save  their  own  and  took  stern 
measures  to  repress  schismatics,  as  we  have  seen 
in  their  persecution  of  the  Quakers.  They  would 
tolerate  no  defiance  of  authority  in  a  matter  that 
appears  to  us  so  unimportant  as  dress,  but  which 
then  had  a  significance  that  can  be  understood  only 
by  properly  balancing  it  in  its  relation  with  life  as 
a  whole.  And  these  struggling  colonists  were  con 
stantly  being  watched  and  nagged  by  their  pro 
prietors  and  guardians  in  England,  who  naturally 
delighted  in  the  opportunity  of  being  super-virtu 
ous  at  the  expense  of  their  proteges,  for  nothing 
produces  a  greater  glow  of  contentment  in  even 
the  most  lofty  nature  than  vicarious  virtues  that 
cost  nothing  and  cause  no  personal  inconvenience. 
Governor  Winthrop  was  reminded  from  London  in 
1636  that  "many  of  your  plantacions  discover  too 
much  pride,"  and  it  was  grievous  sin  in  the  eyes  of 
the  virtuous  in  London  that  some  of  the  colonists 
wrote  for  "cut  work  coifes"  to  be  sent  to  them. 


194  THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

Puritan  or  Parisian,  seventeenth  or  twentieth 
centuries,  has  the  feminine  world  ever  ceased  to 
think  of  the  latest  fashion  or  to  long  to  look 
attractive  ? 

Sumptuary  laws  were  passed,  and  the  magistrates 
of  Massachusetts  were  evidently  of  the  belief  of 
Stubbes  that  there  must  be  a  sharp  dividing  line 
between  the  "noble  and  the  worshipful"  and  they 
that  "be  base  by  byrth,  meane  by  estate  and  servyle 
by  calling."  In  1651  the  Massachusetts  General 
Court  expressed  its  "utter  detestation  that  men  and 
women  of  mean  condition,  and  calling,  should  take 
vppon  them  the  garbe  of  gentlemen  by  wearing  of 
gold  or  silver  lace,  or  buttons  or  poynts  at  their 
knees,  or  walke  in  great  boots,  or  women  of  the 
same  ranke  wear  silke  or  tiffany  hoods  or  scarfs." 
It  will  be  seen  that  there  was  no  "utter  detestation" 
of  men  and  women  wearing  the  clothes  that  were 
proper  to  their  station  in  life;  it  was  only  against 
the  lower  orders  aping  the  fashions  of  their  betters 
that  censure  was  directed.  In  Newbury,  two  years 
after  the  passage  of  this  law,  two  women  were 
"presented"  for  wearing  silk  hoods  and  scarfs,  but 
they  were  discharged  on  proof  that  their  husbands 
were  worth  .£200  each.  A  few  years  later  in  North 
ampton,  thirty-eight  women  were  presented  for 
wearing  silk  because  they  were  below  the  degree 
permitted  for  that  feminine  luxury.  Sixteen-year- 
old  Hannah  Lyman,  a  rebel  at  heart  if  there  ever 
was  one,  was  presented  for  "wearing  silk  in  a 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  195 

flaunting  manner,  in  an  offensive  way  and  garb,  not 
only  before  but  when  she  stood  presented."  *  One 
would  like  to  have  a  picture  of  Hannah,  who,  know 
ing  the  power  of  silk  on  the  obtuse  masculine  intel 
lect,  boldly  flaunted  her  flounces  before  that  grave 
and  dignified  bench  as  if  defying  man  ever  to  make 
woman  change  her  fashions  because  of  the  law's 
decree. 

Many  curious  mistakes  have  been  made  in  the 
name  of  philology,  and  nothing  is  more  interesting 
than  to  note  how  through  the  perversion  of  words 
a  meaning  entirely  different  to  that  which  they  origi 
nally  possessed  has  been  given  to  them.  In  the 
chronicles  of  the  early  Puritans  the  term  "sad 
color"  as  applied  to  dress  is  frequently  used,  from 
which  the  modern  writer  has  naturally  but  erro 
neously  gathered  the  impression  that  "sad  color" 
meant  sombre  hues,  the  colors  that  we  should  to 
day  wear  to  express  spiritual  dejection;  in  other 
words,  black  or  dark  shades.  Now  to  the  Puritans 
the  term  connoted  an  entirely  different  meaning. 
No  further  evidence  is  needed  than  a  letter  written 
by  Winthrop  to  his  wife  in  which  he  tells  her  that 
he  has  ordered  for  her  a  "grave  gown,"  "not  black, 
but  sad  colour."  "Sad  colors"  in  those  days  were 
the  quiet  tints,  the  same  shades  that  the  well-dressed 
woman  of  to-day,  who  does  not  want  to  be  con 
spicuous,  selects  for  her  walking  suit;  the  quiet 
colors  as  opposed  to  the  more  brilliant  hues,  but  not 

1  Earle:  Home  Life  in  Colonial  Days,  pp.  283-284. 


196          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

necessarily  gray  or  "a  dingy  grayish  brown  —  nor 
even  a  dark  brown."  We  read  distinctly  in  an 
English  list  of  dyes  of  the  year  1638  of  these  tints 
in  these  words:  " Sadd-colours  the  following;  liver 
colour,  De  Boys,  tawney,  russet,  purple,  French 
green,  ginger-lyne,  deere  colour,  orange  colour."  l 
De  Boys,  tawney,  russet,  ginger-lyne,  and  deere 
colour  were  various  shades  of  brown,  and  brown 
is  not  now  regarded  as  an  emblem  of  mourning 
or  sorrow;  and  there  wTere  also  among  the  "sad 
colors"  liver  gray,  which  was  gray  with  a  tinge  of 
purple;  purple,  green,  and  orange;  surely  variety 
enough  to  suit  all  tastes  and  complexions,  and  to 
prove  that  the  Puritans  did  not  restrict  themselves 
to  the  use  of  only  one  shade.  In  those  days  men 
and  women  disposed  of  their  clothing  by  will.  A 
Dorchester  woman  who  died  in  1688  enumerated 
among  other  articles  "best  red  kersey  petticoate," 
"sad  grey  kersey  wascote,"  "a  blew  apron,"  "red 
serge  petticoat,"  "green  searge  wascotte,"  "green 
linsey  woolsey  petticoate,"  "a  greene  under  coat," 
"my  murry  wascote,"  "six  yards  of  redd  cloth," 
"my  coate  and  my  blew  wascote,"  "my  green 
apron,"  a  combination  of  hues  diverse  enough  to 
destroy  the  fiction  that  these  people  loved  monotony 
and  hated  color. 

It  would  not  have  been  surprising  if  the  Puritan 
had  dressed  in  one  shade,  and  that  dark,  for  the 
Puritan  was  a  pioneer,  and  the  pioneer,  controlled 

1  Earle:  op.  cit.,  p.  27. 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  197 

by  utilitarian  motives  and  not  swayed  by  religious 
'or  other  impulses,  has  always  selected  the  garb 
that  would  be  most  serviceable  and  would  with 
stand  the  hardest  usage  and  show  the  fewest  marks 
of  wear.  The  pioneers  of  a  later  day,  the  men 
who  settled  the  West,  the  men  of  a  still  later  day 
who  followed  the  overland  trail,  used  leather  and 
homespun,  not  because  they  disliked  color  or  other 
fabrics,  but  because  these  were  most  suited  for  their 
purpose.  Modern  military  experience  has  taught 
that  attractive  as  scarlet  may  be  in  times  of  peaceful 
parade,  on  active  service  the  monotone  of  khaki, 
less  pleasing  to  the  eye,  serves  a  much  more  use 
ful  purpose.  The  war  offices  of  the  world  have 
simply  learned  the  lesson  that  the  pioneer  of  more 
than  a  century  ago  acquired  by  intuition  and 
experience. 

The  Puritans  were  comfortably  clothed  and 
housed,  comfortably,  that  is,  for  their  time  and 
surroundings  and  always  remembering  they  were 
settlers  in  a  new  country,  where  everything  to  sup 
port  life  had  to  be  raised  by  their  own  hands  or  was 
brought  across  the  seas  in  slow-moving  vessels  that 
came  at  irregular  intervals.  As  Massachusetts  be 
came  systematically  colonized  by  the  London  pro 
prietors  the  emigrants  were  outfitted  in  no  scrimping 
fashion.  The  following  is  an  inventory  of  the 
"apparrell  for  100  men,"  furnished  to  each  member 
of  Higginson's  company  in  1628: — 

"4  peares  of  shoes,  4  peares  of  stockins,  1  peare 


198  THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

Norwich  gaiters,  4  shirts,  2  suits  dublets  and  hose 
of  leather  lyn'd  with  oyld  skin  leather,  ye  hose  & 
doublett  with  hooks  &  eyes,  1  suit  of  Norden  dus- 
sens  or  Hampshire  kersies  lynd  the  hose  with  skins, 
doublets  with  lynen  of  gilford  or  gedlyman  kerseys, 
4  bands,  2  handkerchiefs,  1  wastecoat  of  greene 
cotton  bound  about  with  red  tape,  1  leather  girdle, 
1  Monmouth  cap,  1  black  hatt  lyned  in  the  brows 
with  lether,  5  Red  knitt  capps  milPd,  about  5d 
apiece,  2  peares  of  gloves,  1  Mandillion  [mantle  or 
great  coat]  lyned  with  cotton,  1  peare  of  breeches 
and  waistcoat."  1  A  larger  wardrobe  this  than  many 
of  the  descendants  of  these  pioneers  both  in  Old 
and  New  England  now  possess;  and  green  waist 
coats  bound  with  red  tape  and  red  knit  caps  cer 
tainly  betoken  no  dislike  for  color  or  a  preference 
for  "Puritan  gray." 

While  the  dress  of  the  common  people  among  the 
Puritans  was  simple  and  in  keeping  with  their  life 
and  their  surroundings,  it  is  a  mistake  to  suppose 
that  men  and  women  of  station  did  not  indulge 
their  love  of  finery.  That  saintly  and  well-beloved 
man,  Elder  Brewster,  boasted  among  his  other 
worldly  possessions  a  blue  cloth  coat,  a  violet- 
colored  cloth  coat,  and  a  green  waistcoat.  Governor 
Winthrop  delighted  in  gold  lace.  So  eager  were  the 
women  to  be  in  fashion  that  the  pseudo-humble 
follower  of  Saint  Crispin,  the  Simple  Cobler  of 
Aggawam,  who  seems  to  have  concerned  himself 

1  Ames:  The  May-Flower  and  Her  Log,  p.  212. 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  199 

more  with  women's  souls  than  men's  soles,  vented 
his  scorn  on  the  "nugiperous  gentledames "  of  the 
Colony  who  were  so  frivolous  as  to  ask  "what 
dresse  the  Queen  is  in  this  week,"  and  who  instead 
of  listening  to  pious  exhortations  must  needs  fill 
their  minds  with  the  "very  newest  fashion  of  the 
Court";  and  he  poured  forth  all  the  vials  of  his 
wrath  on  the  "woman  who  lives  but  to  ape  the 
newest  court  fashion"  by  pronouncing  her  "the 
very  gizzard  of  a  trifle,  the  product  of  a  quarter  of 
a  cypher  —  the  epitome  of  nothing,  fitter  to  be 
kickt,  if  she  were  of  a  kickable  substance,  than 
either  honour 'd  or  humour *d."  l  Only  a  few  years 
after  the  establishment  of  the  Colony  it  was  found 
necessary  to  enact  ordinances  prohibiting  the  wear 
ing  of  short  sleeves  by  women  so  as  to  reveal  their 
arms;  nor  must  women  appear  with  "naked  breasts 
and  arms;  or  as  it  were  pinioned  with  superstitious 
ribbons  on  hair  and  apparel,"  that  is,  women  of 
mean  estate.  The  rich  have  always  been  a  law 
unto  themselves,  even  in  Puritan  America.  Pretty 
women  might  display  their  natural  charms  without 
fear  of  the  law,  and  apparently  in  the  sight  of  the 
favor  of  the  Lord.  We  have  numerous  portraits  of 
ladies  in  velvets  and  satins  and  laces,  with  bared 
necks  and  sleeves  ending  at  the  elbow.  One  author 
calls  attention  to  the  fact  that  a  French  portrait 
of  Madame  Maintenon  shows  precisely  the  same 
"whisk"  [lace  collar]  as  is  represented  in  the  por- 

1  The  Simple  Cobler  of  Aggawam,  p.  20. 


200          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

trait  of  a  young,  pretty,  and  extravagant  Plymouth 
woman  of  the  name  of  Padishal. 

Sumptuary  laws,  it  may  not  be  amiss  to  point 
out,  were  not  an  English  invention  discovered  in 
America  or  a  peculiar  institution  of  the  Puritans, 
but  were  part  of  the  economic  and  class  legislation 
of  England  that  the  Puritans  brought  with  them  as 
they  brought  other  social  customs.  It  is  partly  in- 
conscient  cant  and  partly  ignorance  that  make  so 
many  writers  and  social  reformers  bewail  the  "good 
old  times"  and  deplore  class  distinctions  and  long 
for  a  return  to  that  Arcadian  age  when  all  men  were 
equal  and  there  was  no  dividing  line  between  rich 
and  poor,  the  high  and  the  low.  Yet  in  the  good  old 
times,  which  being  dead  must  only  be  mentioned  in 
terms  of  eulogy,  class  distinctions  were  greater  than 
they  are  to-day  and  social  divisions  were  more 
sharply  defined.  To-day  the  beggar  may  wear  silk 
if  his  trade  is  lucrative  enough,  and  the  millionaire 
may  wear  fustian  if  his  taste  runs  in  that  direction, 
and  society  treats  both  with  cynical  indifference  as 
the  law  is  occupied  with  things  more  important 
than  the  regulation  of  dress.  With  all  their  humil 
ity  and  intense  love  of  democracy  the  Puritans 
never  subscribed  to  the  doctrine  of  the  equality  of 
birth  or  intellect,  but  always  recognized  the  differ 
ence  existing  between  men  as  the  result  of  birth 
and  education  and  natural  abilities. 

Social  lines  were  distinctly  marked  in  the  seven 
teenth  century.  Winthrop,  in  his  state  papers,  writ- 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  201 

ing  as  governor,  talked  of  "the  common  people." 
The  "  common  people  "  were  whipped  and  set  in  the 
stocks  when  they  misbehaved  themselves ;  the  gentry 
were  fined  and  admonished.1 

"Mayflower  furniture"  has  become  a  standing 
joke  among  collectors  since  Americans  set  up  gene 
alogical  trees  and  proved  their  descent  from  the 
passenger  list  of  the  Mayflower  by  the  possession  of 
heirlooms.  If  all  the  furniture  and  other  belongings 
now  proudly  exhibited  as  the  heritage  of  colonial 
ancestry  had  been  brought  over  in  the  hold  of  that 
historic  ship,  she  must  have  had  the  capacity  of  a 
modern  transatlantic  cargo  vessel,  and  the  four- 
posters  and  the  highboys,  the  warming-pans  and 
the  candlesticks,  must  have  overflowed  from  hold 
to  cabin,  and  from  cabin  to  deck,  greatly  to  the 
inconvenience  of  the  Pilgrims.  Mayflower  fur 
niture,  properly  pedigreed,  made  in  the  vicinity  of 
New  York  and  some  other  large  cities,  is  a  lucra 
tive  trade,  and  by  the  employment  of  the  proper 
agent  one  can  find  "genuine"  colonial  furniture  as 
easily  as  your  Belgian  guide  will  produce  bullets 
dug  up  that  morning  on  the  field  of  Waterloo. 

Yet  while  the  Colonists  lived  in  log  houses  with 
thatched  roofs,  their  houses  sheltered  them  from 
the  extremes  of  both  heat  and  cold,  and  without 

1  Adams:  Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History,  vol.  i,  p.  335. 

"43.  No  man  shall  be  beaten  with  above  forty  stripes,  nor  shall  any  true 
gentleman,  nor  any  man  equal  to  a  gentleman,  be  punished  with  whipping, 
unless  his  crime  be  very  shameful,  and  his  course  of  life  vicious  and  profli 
gate." — Body  of  Liberties,  1641,  iii.  Massachusetts  Hist.CoU.,  vol.viii,  p.  224. 


202          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

being  luxurious,  as  we  should  consider  luxury  in 
these  days,  they  were  comfortable  and  served  their 
purpose  admirably.  Less  than  a  quarter  of  a 
century  had  passed  since  the  first  migration  when 
one  of  their  chroniclers  wrote:  "The  Lord  hath 
been  pleased  to  turn  all  the  wigwams,  huts,  and 
hovels  the  English  dwelt  in  at  first  coming,  into 
orderly,  fair,  well  built  houses,  well  furnished, 
many  of  them,  together  with  orchards  filled  with 
goodly  fruit  trees,  and  gardens  with  variety  of 
flowers."1  Not  a  picture  this  of  squalid  poverty; 
and  another  writer  says  that  the  settlers  were  better 
housed  and  better  fed  than  they  had  been  accus 
tomed  to  in  England. 

Johnson  tells  of  the  houses  "well  furnished," 
which  they  were  not  in  the  modern  sense,  although 
there  were  furniture  and  household  equipments 
enough  for  necessity  and  comfort,  as  comfort  was 
understood  in  that  day.  It  is  probable  that  very 
little  furniture,  that  is  chairs  or  tables  or  bedsteads, 
was  brought  over  on  the  first  voyage  of  the  May 
flower,  and  I  am  inclined  to  this  opinion  because 
while  there  is  frequent  mention  of  the  cargo  in 
authentic  records,  no  reference  is  made  to  furniture; 
but  I  admit  this  is  not  conclusive,  as  furniture  may 
simply  have  been  regarded  as  household  belong 
ings  and  therefore  not  important  enough  to  be 
separately  listed.  But  later  furniture  was  undoubt 
edly  sent  over  from  England,  and  it  is  undisputed 

1  Johnson:  The  Wonder  Working  Providence  of  Sion's  Saviour,  p.  174. 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  203 

that  many  of  the  well-to-do  colonists  brought  with 
them  some  of  those  pieces  of  mahogany  that 
Americans  now  prize  so  dearly.  Forks  in  that  day 
were  practically  unknown  and  silver  was  to  be 
found  only  on  the  tables  of  the  rich,  but  there  were 
spoons  and  dishes  of  pewter,  candlesticks  of  brass 
and  iron,  coarse  sheets  and  blankets,  and  with 
greater  social  requirements  came  the  luxury  of 
tablecloths. 

At  first  there  was  often  great  scarcity  of  food, 
as  is  natural  among  a  new  people  in  a  strange  land 
unfamiliar  with  the  soil  and  climatic  conditions 
and  ill  provided  with  proper  implements  of  hus 
bandry.  In  1622  Bradford,  in  that  history  of  which 
Senator  Hoar  has  said  "there  is  nothing  like  it  in 
human  annals  since  the  story  of  Bethlehem,"1  wrote 
"famine  begane  now  to  pinch  them  sore,"2  but  they 
were  saved  from  starvation  by  the  unexpected 
arrival  of  a  ship,  whose  captain  was  able  to  spare 
them  a  small  supply  of  provisions,  so  scant,  however, 
that "  it  arose  to  but  a  quarter  of  a  pound  of  bread  a 
day  to  each  person ;  and  ye  Govr  caused  it  to  be  daily 
given  them,  otherwise  had  it  been  in  their  own 
custody,  they  would  have  eate  it  &  then  starved. 
But  thus,  with  what  els  they  could  get,  they  made 
pretie  shift  till  corne  was  ripe."3  On  more  than  one 
occasion  they  were  driven  to  "pretie  shifts"  to 
fend  off  starvation,  there  were  times  when  starva- 

1  Address  before  the  Massachusetts  Legislature,  May  26,  1897. 
3  Bradford:  History  of  Plimouth  Plantation,  p.  150. 
8  Bradford,  op.  cit.,  p.  151. 


204          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tion  and  disease  made  sad  inroads  into  their  ranks, 
but  in  a  comparatively  few  years  after  their  landing 
the  question  of  food  no  longer  troubled  them.  They 
came  to  no  sterile  land.  America  is  peculiarly  a 
land  of  Nature's  bounty,  where  the  earth  and  the 
waters  yield  to  man  their  riches.  A  year  before  the 
time  when  Bradford  wrote  of  the  pinch  of  famine, 
he  notes  the  great  store  they  took  of  "codd,  &  bass 
&  other  fish,"  and  as  winter  approached  "  began  to 
come  in  store  of  foule."  "Beside  water  foule,  ther 
was  great  store  of  wild  Turkies,  of  which  they  took 
many,  besides  venison  &c.  Besids  they  had  aboute 
a  peck  of  meale  a  week  to  a  person,  or  now  since 
harvest,  Indean  corne  to  yt  proportion.  Which 
made  many  afterwards  write  so  largely  of  their 
plenty  hear  to  their  friends  in  England,  which  were 
not  fained,  but  true  reports." * 

I  would  not  be  understood  as  implying  that  life 
was  soft  and  easy  for  these  people,  that  they  were 
surrounded  with  great  luxury  and  comfort,  or  that 
they  were  required  to  put  forth  little  exertion  to 
support  themselves.  Life  was  hard  and  a  constant 
struggle,  they  were  in  perpetual  danger  from  their 
enemies,  they  were  very  often  at  first,  as  we  have 
seen,  menaced  by  starvation,  while  disease  and  sick 
ness  must  yield  to  empirical  methods  or  claim  them. 
But  it  was  no  hopeless  or  despairing  struggle  in 
which  they  engaged,  it  was  no  barren  or  fever- 
stricken  land  which  they  planted.  Even  in  that 

1  Bradford,  op.  cit.,  p.  127. 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  205 

early  day  it  was  a  land  of  hope  and  promise,  de 
manding  incessant  toil  and  the  qualities  of  industry 
and  fortitude  that  so  conspicuously  distinguished 
these  settlers,  but  holding  the  reward  of  rich  return 
for  labor  intelligently  directed  and  inspired  by  the 
determination  to  succeed. 

In  the  air  of  traditional  gloom  that  surrounds  the 
Puritan  we  see  him  sourly  condemning  all  innocent 
amusements  and  acting  as  a  killjoy,  rather  than 
fostering  those  normal  pleasures  of  the  people  that 
were  supposed  to  mark  the  light-hearted  joyousness 
of  the  masses  of  Merry  England.  But  the  sports  of 
the  English  people  were  not  so  innocent  as  they 
appear  now,  filtered  through  the  pages  of  writers, 
colored  by  their  surroundings ;  and  in  an  age  when 
life  was  held  less  sacred  and  passion  was  unre 
strained  by  convention,  brutality  was  mated  with 
pleasure.  It  is  an  idyllic  picture  we  have  of  the 
Maypole  set  up  on  the  village  green,  innocent  young 
girls  dancing  about  it  garlanded  with  flowers,  the 
men  with  rough  good  humor  finding  pleasure  in 
cracking  each  other  over  the  heads  with  quarter 
staves  or  bending  their  sinews  in  wrestling  bouts. 
This  is  the  stage-setting  familiar  to  every  student 
of  English  literature  who  plaintively  but  sincerely 
regrets  that  the  good  old  times  with  their  simple 
amusements  have  passed  away;  but  few  know  that 
before  the  Maypole  was  set  up  rural  England  imi 
tated  the  practices  of  Rome  and  spent  a  night  of 
saturnalia  in  the  woods.  The  Puritans  frowned, 


206          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

not  on  the  innocent  pleasures  of  the  Maypole,  but 
on  the  immorality  that  had  been  sanctioned  by 
custom  to  be  part  of  its  observances.  For  the  same 
reason,  the  worrying  to  death  by  dogs  of  a  chained 
bull  or  bear  was  as  repugnant  to  men  of  a  finer 
nature  as  the  slaughter  of  rats  by  a  terrier  is  to 
the  great  majority  of  decent  men  to-day.  But  the 
gentle  Puritan  might  still  take  part  in  a  sporting 
event.  Bull-baiting  and  cockfighting  he  banned, 
but  the  wolf,  who  was  his  natural  enemy,  might  be 
harried  and  hunted,  and  wolf-baiting  was  as  popu 
lar  in  New  England  as  bull-baiting  was  in  Old 
England. 

Many  of  the  customs  of  Old  England  the  Puri 
tans  brought  with  them,  but  some  of  them  were 
wisely  left  behind,  and  the  saturnalian  observance 
of  the  first  of  May  was  not  to  their  liking.  When 
Morton  set  up  his  Maypole  at  Merry  Mount, 
"drinking  and  dancing  aboute  it  many  days  to 
gether,  inviting  the  Indean  women,  for  their  con 
sorts,  dancing  and  frisking  together,  (like  so  many 
fairies,  or  furies  rather,)  and  worse  practices.  As 
if  they  had  anew  revived  &  celebrated  the  feasts 
of  ye  Roman  Goddes  Flora,  or  ye  beastly  practices 
of  ye  madd  Bacchinalians,"  as  Bradford  tells  us, 
the  Puritans  were  naturally  shocked,  and  saw  the 
necessity,  for  moral  no  less  than  social  reasons,  for 
the  maintenance  of  discipline  as  well  as  to  prevent 
the  corruption  of  the  Indians,  of  promptly  sup 
pressing  such  improper  arid  dangerous  proceed- 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  207 

ings.  The  Maypole  was  cut  down  and  Governor 
Endicott  "rebuked  them  for  their  profannes,  and 
admonished  them  to  look  ther  should  be  better 
walking."  The  Puritans  frowned  on  the  theatre,  be 
cause  the  drama  of  that  age  was  an  appeal  to  lust 
and  passion;  it  was  profane  and  gross;  it  empha 
sized  the  worst  side  of  man  and  woman ;  the  vice  of 
the  English  people  was  gambling,  and  gaming  was 
sternly  prohibited ;  dancing  was  also  under  the  ban 
because  it  was  associated  in  the  Puritan  mind  with 
"worse  practices." 

But  in  their  own  way  the  Puritans  found  means 
of  amusement.  Many  writers  have  attempted  to 
demonstrate  that  in  every  observance  of  every 
relation  of  life  the  Puritan  gave  to  it  a  religious 
symbolism,  and  in  support  of  that  they  point  to 
an  institution  peculiarly  American,  Thanksgiving. 
Now  here  again  we  see  how  institutions  lose  their 
original  meaning,  precisely  as  certain  words  are 
given  a  modern  interpretation  quite  foreign  to  their 
significance  a  century  or  so  ago.  The  raison  d'etre 
for  the  modern  Thanksgiving  is  to  give  praise  for 
Divine  blessings,  and  many  persons  in  obedience 
to  the  suggestion  of  the  President  and  Governors 
go  to  church,  but  the  majority  regard  the  day  as  a 
secular  holiday  and  treat  it  as  a  pause  in  their 
daily  toil  instead  of  to  be  set  apart  for  the  searching 
of  hearts.  And  in  this  they  simply  follow  the 
example  set  by  the  Pilgrims  (again  there  is  that 
confusion  of  associating  events  with  the  Puritan 


208          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

that  belonged  to  the  Pilgrims)  when  they  celebrated 
their  first  Thanksgiving.  Mourt  in  his  Relation 
shows  that  it  was  a  holiday  and  not  a  holy  day, 
and  there  is  not  the  slightest  hint  that  it  was  given 
a  religious  observance.  "  Our  harvest  being  gotten 
in,"  the  chronicler  writes,  "our  Governor  sent 
foure  men  on  fowling,  that  wre  might  after  a  more 
special  manner  rejoice  together,  after  we  had 
gathered  the  fruits  of  our  labors.  They  foure  in 
one  day  killed  as  much  fowle,  as,  with  a  little  help 
beside,  served  the  Company  almost  a  weeke,  at 
which  time,  amongst  other  Recreations,  we  ex 
ercised  our  Arms,  many  of  the  Indians  coming 
amongst  us,  and  amongst  the  rest,  their  greatest 
King,  Massasoyt,  with  some  ninety  men,  whom  for 
three  days  we  entertained  and  feasted,  and  they 
went  out  and  killed  five  Deere,  which  they  brought 
to  the  Plantation,  and  bestowed  on  our  Governor, 
and  vpon  the  Captaine,  and  others."1  Entertain 
ment  and  feasting  for  three  days  and  the  exercise 
of  arms,  which  the  modern  writer  would  express  as 
a  military  parade,  do  not  convey  the  impression  of 
a  day  of  gloom,  which  began  with  church  services 
and  ended  with  the  whole  community  painfully 
reading  the  Bible  as  a  matter  of  duty  and  longing  for 
the  day  to  close  and  bring  with  it  relief  from  this 
oppressive  method  of  thanking  the  Lord  for  His 
manifold  blessings.  The  periodical  fast  days  and 
feast  days,  sanctified  by  the  ancient  reverence  of  the 

1  Mourt's  Relation,  p.  133. 


HATRED  OF  COLOR  A  MYTH  209 

Church,  were  scrupulously  disregarded  and  dis 
countenanced  in  New  England.  But,  for  special 
occasions,  fasts  and  thanksgivings  were  frequently 
observed  by  the  whole  community,  or  by  single 
churches;  and  after  a  time,  in  the  place  of  Good 
Friday  and  of  Christmas,  a  Fast  Day  was  regularly 
kept  at  the  season  of  annual  planting,  and  a  feast 
day  (Thanksgiving)  at  the  time  of  the  ingathering 
of  the  harvest.1 

The  hard-faced,  atrabilious,  earnest-eyed  race, 
stiff  from  long  wrestling  with  the  Lord  in  Prayer, 
and  who  had  taught  Satan  to  dread  the  new  Puri 
tan  hug  2  is  a  familiar  figure,  but  Puritan  humor  is 
less  often  remembered.  To  pun  may  be  the  lowest 
form  of  humor  and  indicative  of  only  a  rudimentary 
perception  of  wit,  but  it  at  least  shows  that  there 
is  an  appreciation  of  the  lighter  side  of  life.  The 
writings  of  the  Puritan  reveal  this  tendency,  and  a 
vein  of  dry,  sarcastic,  ironic  humor  is  to  be  found 
in  their  sermons  and  religious  discourses.  It  was 
humor  not  without  its  sting,  but  it  evidenced  that 
they  had  a  lively  sense  of  the  ridiculous  and  were 
not  averse  to  malevolent  pleasantry.  Yankee  wit 
has  become  proverbial,  and  it  survives  in  the  litera 
ture  that  is  typical  of  Massachusetts,  in  the  writings 
of  Lowell  and  Holmes;  in  a  lesser  degree  it  may  be 
found  in  the  works  of  Emerson  and  Hawthorne, 
and  it  occasionally  flashes  out  in  Whittier. 

1  Palfrey:  History  of  New  England,  vol.  ii,  p.  44;  cf.  W.  DeLoss  Love, 
Jr. :  The  Fast  and  Thanksgiving  Days  of  New  England. 
3  Lowell:  Biglow  Papers. 


210          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Was  the  Puritan  really  as  austere  as  he  has  been 
represented,  or  does  he  merely  appear  so  when  seen 
through  the  softened  light  of  to-day  ?  In  compari 
son  with  the  men  of  his  own  time  he  was  an  un 
comfortable  person  with  a  fixed  idea,  and  all  men 
of  fixed  ideas  are  uncomfortable  to  the  great  mass, 
which  never  rises  above  mediocrity  because  of  its 
constitutional  inability  to  concentrate;  because  it 
scatters  what  few  thoughts  it  has  and  dissipates  its 
energies  instead  of  bringing  all  its  force  to  bear  on 
the  particular  work  in  hand.  Ability  is  pertinacity. 

In  England,  after  the  Restoration,  there  was  a  very 
natural  tendency  not  only  to  reverse  everything 
that  Puritanism  had  accomplished  politically,  but 
socially  to  seek  revenge  for  the  rigid  morality 
that  Puritanism  had  imposed ;  to  do  everything  that 
Puritanism  frowned  on  was  to  show  the  contempt 
in  which  Puritanism  was  held.  It  was  this  reaction 
that,  to  a  large  extent,  was  responsible  for  the  vice 
and  profligacy  of  the  court  and  the  low  moral  tone 
of  politics  for  the  next  hundred  and  fifty  years  suc 
ceeding  the  death  of  the  Protector.  In  America 
the  same  causes  operated.  With  the  downfall  of 
the  theocratic  state,  with  the  beginning  of  the  end 
of  colonial  isolation  and  the  bringing  of  the  colonies 
into  a  quasi-political  entity  which  sowed  the  seminal 
principle  of  political  union,  with  the  great  impetus 
given  to  expansion,  there  was  a  rebound  from  the 
weight  which  Puritanism  had  laid  on  men  and  a 
temptation  to  scoff  at  the  things  which  had  been 


HATRED   OF   COLOR  A  MYTH 

held  sacred.  It  is  a  singular  fact  that  most  of  the 
American  historians  have  been  anti-Puritan,  and 
even  those  historical  writers  who  are  descended 
from  the  Puritans  have  been  influenced  by  the  pre 
vailing  popular  opinion  and,  as  if  to  show  their 
superiority  to  their  ancestors  and  make  parade  of 
their  "liberality,"  either  sneer  at  those  qualities 
of  the  Puritan  that  made  them  a  race  apart  or 
else  seek  to  extenuate  the  virtues  of  an  age  that 
are  vices  when  seen  through  the  eyes  of  a  more 
advanced  and  refined  civilization. 


CHAPTER   XIII 

THE     FOUNDATION     ON     WHICH     THE     AMERICAN 
CHARACTER   RESTS 

THIS  is  a  convenient  point  to  recapitulate  briefly 
what  has  been  said  in  the  last  six  chapters.  My  aim 
has  been  to  show  the  solid  foundation  on  which  the 
American  character  has  been  slowly  built.  These 
things  are  to  be  remembered:  — 

First.  That  it  was  the  Puritan  and  not  the  Pil 
grim  who  founded  American  institutions. 

Second.  That  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  are  not  synony 
mous  terms,  and  that  Pilgrim  and  Puritan  had  little 
if  anything  in  common. 

Third.  That  while  the  Pilgrim  was  a  separatist 
from  the  Church  of  England  and  conceded  the  right 
of  every  man  to  worship  God  in  his  own  way,  the 
Puritan  was  a  Church  of  England  man  and  tolerated 
no  other  form  of  worship. 

Fourth.  That  the  Puritan  was  in  all  things  an 
Englishman.  He  brought  with  him  to  America 
English  institutions,  English  morals,  the  English 
mental  attitude.  He  was  an  Englishman  in 
America  as  he  had  always  been  an  Englishman 
in  England. 

Fifth.   That  the  Bible  was  the  Constitution  of  the 


FOUNDATION   OF  CHARACTER    213 

Puritan  state.  It  was  a  civil  no  less  than  a  religious 
and  a  moral  code. 

Sixth.  That  Puritanism,  beginning  as  a  religious 
movement,  soon  became  political,  and  was  the  force 
that  made  the  English  people  assert  their  rights 
against  the  oppression  of  the  Crown  and  those  set  in 
authority  over  them,  both  spiritual  and  temporal. 
It  made  the  Puritan  always  ready  to  resist  consti 
tuted  authority  when  his  conscience  demanded  it. 
It  sowed  the  seeds  of  democracy.  It  was  not  only 
religious  and  political,  but  it  was  also  economic. 
It  was,  summing  up  everything  in  one  word,  one  of 
the  greatest  Social  movements  the  world  has  ever 
known. 

Seventh.  That  the  Puritan,  while  austere  and 
fanatical  and  much  given  to  morbid  introspection, 
was  neither  without  natural  human  affections,  nor 
a  sense  of  humor,  nor  averse  to  rational  amuse 
ment. 

Eighth.  That  the  Puritan  lived  neither  in  squalor 
nor  in  abject  poverty.  For  his  day  and  generation 
he  was  well  found;  in  many  respects  better  clothed 
and  fed  and  housed  than  the  mass  of  the  English 
people  living  in  England. 

Ninth.  That  the  English  Puritan  who  emigrated 
to  America,  by  the  force  of  circumstances,  by  his 
environment  and  climatic  influences,  by  his  social, 
moral  and  political  code,  diverged  from  the  parent 
stock,  and  in  less  than  a  century  after  his  migration 
produced  a  new  race. 


214          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

And  tenth,  and  finally.  The  Puritan  was  a 
human  Englishman  and  not  a  miraculous  or  a 
mythical  creation. 

With  these  facts  established  it  becomes  easier  to 
understand  how  it  came  about  that  in  the  fullness  of 
time  there  was  to  be  born  a  new  race  in  America. 


CHAPTER   XIV 

TOBACCO   AND   SLAVERY 

WE  turn  now  to  the  South  and  retrace  our  steps 
a  few  years.  The  psychology  of  the  men  who  first 
settled  Virginia  does  not  require  the  detailed  study 
given  to  the  Puritans.  Social  conditions  in  Massa 
chusetts  were  different  from  Virginia,  which  more 
nearly  reproduced  those  of  England  on  a  smaller 
scale.  The  theocracy  which  was  set  up  in  Massachu 
setts  found  no  lodgment  in  Virginia.  Each  commu 
nity  followed  its  natural  impulse,  and  each  developed 
along  certain  lines  that  were  to  mark  the  distinction 
between  the  North  and  South.  The  character  of 
Massachusetts  was  laid  in  its  theocratic  system,  that 
of  Virginia  in  its  system  of  slavery  and  the  produc 
tion  of  tobacco;  and  the  effect  of  those  influences, 
tobacco  and  slavery,  we  are  now  to  see.  The 
American  character  was  formed  no  less  by  Virginia 
than  it  was  by  Massachusetts,  and  each  contributed 
its  own  share  to  that  composite  and  complex  nature. 

In  1607,  thirteen  years  before  the  little  band  of 
Pilgrims  found  meagre  shelter  on  the  inhospitable 
coast  of  Massachusetts,  a  company  of  Englishmen 
laid  the  foundation  for  a  Greater  England  at  James 
town  in  Virginia,  "  I  shall  yet  live  to  see  Virginia 


216          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

an  English  nation,"  Raleigh  with  inspired  vision 
wrote  to  Sir  Robert  Cecil  shortly  before  the  acces 
sion  of  James  I,  and  the  prophecy  was  fulfilled.  It 
was  the  Puritan  who  was  the  heart  of  the  new 
civilization,  who  brought  to  the  New  World  a  new 
concept  of  life  and  who  gave  birth  to  a  new  system 
of  political  philosophy,  but  it  was  the  Virginian  who 
gave  to  the  heart  its  life's  blood  and  supplied  an 
element  that  saved  a  theocracy  from  subordinating 
the  liberties  of  a  people  to  the  narrow  and  iron 
bound  rule  of  the  church.  Had  the  original  design 
of  the  first  settlers  of  Massachusetts  succeeded,  had 
this  New  England  across  the  sea  been  merely  the  old 
morality  amidst  new  surroundings,  had  the  church 
grasped  the  power  which  for  long  centuries  it 
fought  to  retain  and  made  America  church-governed 
and  priest-ridden,  the  story  which  has  been  written 
in  the  last  three  centuries  would  have  a  different 
meaning. 

It  has  been  the  fashion  to  talk  of  Puritan  New 
England  and  Cavalier  Virginia,  and  inexact  his 
torians  and  careless  writers  have  created  the  mis 
leading  impression  that  the  men  who  first  settled 
Virginia  were  drawn  from  a  higher  social  scale  than 
the  Puritans,  and  that  morally  and  intellectually 
they  were  their  superiors.  The  legend  of  the  South 
is  no  less  fantastic  than  that  of  the  North.  What 
ever  the  vices  or  the  faults  of  these  founders  of  a 
nation  they  were  first  of  all  men,  and  the  majority  of 
them,  those  who  survived  and  from  whose  loins  the 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY    217 

nation  sprung,  were  strong,  courageous  men  who 
would  have  laughed  at  attempts  of  dilettante 
admirers  to  effeminize  them. 

That  the  Virginians  at  the  beginning  were 
"aristocrats,"  to  distinguish  them  from  the  "plain 
people"  who  planted  Massachusetts,  is  as  mythical 
as  the  common  belief  that  Puritanism  stamped  out 
all  natural  affection  and  sunk  its  believers  in  per 
petual  gloom.  Between  the  Englishman  who  in 
the  early  days  of  the  seventeenth  century  went  to 
Virginia  and  the  Englishman  who  later  followed 
him  to  Massachusetts  there  is  little  difference,  and 
that  difference  is  in  favor  of  the  men  who  estab 
lished  themselves  in  the  north.  More  than  a  half  of 
these  first  planters  of  Virginia  "  were  poor  gentlemen 
who  were  unaccustomed  to  manual  labor  and  de 
spised  it;  many  were  small  tradesmen  or  servants; 
some  are  described  as  jewelers,  gold  refiners,  and 
a  perfumer";  not  the  stuff  out  of  which  empires 
are  fashioned,  and  yet  they  were  the  beginnings 
of  Virginia.  The  Puritan  of  the  early  days  was 
animated  by  a  very  high  and  noble  purpose,  mis 
taken  as  we  now  see  his  views  and  aspirations  often 
were,  but  every  man  who  clings  steadfastly  to  an 
ideal  is  the  better  for  it.  The  Virginian  was  under 
no  such  influence.  Religious  persecution,  sublime 
devotion  to  a  higher  cause,  a  passionate  craving  for 
the  spiritual,  did  not  drive  him  forth.  He  went  to 
Virginia  as  an  adventurer,  with  the  spirit  of  the 
gambler  and  the  speculator  in  him,  to  find  there  the 


218          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

fortune  which  had  eluded  him  at  home.  And  in  the 
early  days  many  of  them  went  there  because  they  had 
no  option,  because  they  were  criminals  and  paupers; 
they  were  transported  by  the  Government,  as  in  later 
days  English  criminals  were  sent  to  Botany  Bay. 

An  Englishman  whose  book  on  Slavery  appeared 
shortly  after  the  outbreak  of  the  Civil  War  and  was 
much  quoted  at  the  time,  has  with  diligent  dullness 
packed  a  surprising  amount  of  misinformation  into 
a  couple  of  pages.  "Massachusetts  and  the  other 
New  England  States,"  he  tells  us,  "were  colonized 
principally  from  the  elite  of  the  middle  and  lower 
classes  —  by  people  who,  being  accustomed  to 
labour  with  their  hands,  would  feel  less  need  of 
slaves;  and  who,  moreover,  owing  to  their  political 
views,  having  little  to  hope  for  in  the  way  of  assist 
ance  from  the  country  they  had  quitted,  would 
have  little  choice  but  to  trust  to  their  own  personal 
exertions.  On  the  other  hand,  the  early  emigration 
to  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  the  Carolinas  was  for 
the  most  part  composed  of  the  sons  of  gentry,  whose 
ideas  and  habits  but  ill  fitted  them  for  the  struggle 
with  nature  in  the  wilderness.  Such  emigrants  had 
little  disposition  to  engage  personally  in  the  work 
of  clearance  and  production,  nor  were  they  under 
the  same  necessity  for  this  as  their  brethren  in  the 
north;  for,  being  composed  in  great  part  of  cava 
liers  and  loyalists,  they  were,  for  many  years  after 
the  first  establishment  of  the  settlements,  sustained 
and  petted  by  the  home  government;  being  fur- 


TOBACCO  AND   SLAVERY          219 

nished  not  merely  with  capital  in  the  shape  of  con 
stant  supplies  of  provisions  and  clothing,  but  with 
laborers  in  the  shape  of  convicts,  indented  servants, 
and  slaves.  In  this  way  the  colonists  of  the  Virginia 
group  were  relieved  of  the  necessity  of  personal  toil, 
and  in  this  way,  it  is  said,  slavery,  which  found  little 
footing  in  the  North,  and  never  took  firm  root  there, 
became  established  in  the  Southern  States."  l 

As  a  matter  of  fact,  Virginia  instead  of  being 
petted  was  exploited  for  British  profit,  as  was  cus 
tomary  in  a  day  when  a  colony  was  simply  regarded 
as  valuable  according  to  the  revenue  it  put  into  the 
pockets  of  its  proprietors.  :<We  find  one  governor 
recommending  that  an  act  of  Parliament  should  be 
passed  forbidding  the  Virginians  to  make  their  own 
clothes.  If  the  British  merchants  complained  of  one 
of  the  colony's  laws  it  was  promptly  suspended." 
Charles  I  "  petted  "  his  royal  colony  by  trying  to 
obtain  a  monopoly  of  its  tobacco  crop.  Nor  does  the 
careful  historian  forget  that  Navigation  Act  passed 
in  the  interest  of  English  merchants  and  shipowners 
and  aimed  at  the  growing  competition  of  Virginia 
and  the  other  American  colonies,  which  led  to  the 
first  defiance  of  English  authority  when  Nathaniel 
Bacon  indicted  Sir  William  Berkeley  for  abusing 
his  Majesty's  prerogative. 

From  such  statements  as  this  and  those  of  other 
writers  it  has  come  to  be  commonly  believed  that 
while  there  was  a  fashionable,  highly  cultivated  and 

1  Cairaes:  The  Slave  Power,  pp.  34-35. 


220          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

amusement-loving  society  in  Virginia,  in  New  Eng 
land  society  was  rough  and  uncultured  and  dull; 
that  the  gay  young  blades  who  made  things  lively 
went  to  Virginia,  and  the  good  young  men  of  sancti 
monious  mien  were  sent  to  New  England  to  add 
to  the  general  gloom.  The  golden  age  of  the  colo 
nies  was  from  the  end  of  the  seventeenth  century 
to  the  middle  of  the  next,  and  it  was  during  that 
time  that  Virginia  became  a  land  of  large  estates, 
around  which  cluster  so  many  historical  memories 
and  romantic  associations.  George  Washington 
came  into  possession  of  Mount  Vernon  and  its 
2500  acres  in  1755;  across  the  river  at  Belvoir 
was  the  Fairfax  estate;  it  was  from  the  "White 
House"  in  New  Kent  County  that  Washington 
took  the  young  and  comely  widow  of  Daniel  Parke 
Custis  and  made  her  his  wife.  To  mention  any 
of  those  estates  is  to  recall  the  history  of  the  colonial 
era  and  to  see  again  these  pleasure-loving  English 
men,  but  who  were  men  of  affairs  as  well  as  of 
pleasure.  The  life  of  the  Virginian  was  lived  in  the 
country,  that  of  the  New  Englander  in  the  city  or 
settlement,  and  allowing  for  the  difference  between 
rural  and  urban  life,  men  of  the  same  class  found 
their  pleasures  in  much  the  same  way.  If  sprigs 
of  nobility  went  to  Virginia  and  brought  with  them 
the  fashions  and  manners  of  the  court,  New  Eng 
land  did  not  suffer  because  of  the  absence  of  men 
tors.  Around  the  governors  of  the  various  New 
England  provinces,  we  are  told,  there  was  in  each 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY 

capital  "a  little  circle  of  card-playing,  horse-racing, 
fox-hunting  court  attendants,  who  naturally  wore 
the  best  dress  in  the  province;  English  younger 
sons  sent  to  America  to  sober  down,  where  they 
proceeded  to  liven  America  up.  The  constant  cor 
respondence  of  the  governor  and  his  officials  with 
England  kept  this  circle  fully  informed  upon  all 
the  changes  in  dress;  and  many  of  these  letters, 
both  private  and  official,  have  been  preserved. 
From  them  we  gain  an  excellent  notion  of  the  im 
portance  of  good  dress,  and  the  prevalence  of  good 
dress  in  the  colonies,  and  of  good  living  in  every 
respect  —  furniture,  carriages,  wine,  food.  There 
were  proportionately  more  carriages  in  Boston  than 
in  Lincoln.  Many  had  coaches."  1 

In  Boston  the  influence  of  the  royal  governor  and 
his  staff  established  a  miniature  court,  which 
closely  imitated  English  dress  and  manners,  and 
rivalled  English  luxury.  An  English  traveller,  Ben 
nett,  wrote  of  Boston  in  1740,  "Both  the  ladies  and 
gentlemen  dress  and  appear  as  gay  in  common  as 
courtiers  in  England  on  a  coronation  or  birthday." 
Whitefield  complained  bitterly  of  the  "foolish  vir 
gins  of  New  England  covered  all  over  with  the 
pride  of  life";  of  the  jewels,  patches,  and  gay 
apparel  commonly  worn.2 

But  in  Virginia,  at  the  beginning,  it  was  different. 
If  the  colony  were  to  live,  it  was  necessary  to  have 

1  Earle:  Two  Centuries  of  Costume  in  America,  vol.  ii,  p.  339. 
3  Earle:  op.  cit. 


222          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

labor,  and  Virginia  at  that  time  offering  no  great 
inducement  to  the  thrifty  or  capable  Englishman 
to  begin  a  new  life,  recourse  was  had  to  involuntary 
servitude.  Sir  Thomas  Dale,  one  of  the  early 
governors,  a  man  of  force  and  character,  thus 
bitterly  writes  to  the  Earl  of  Salisbury  on  August 
17,  1611:- 

"Nor  can  I  conceive  how  sutch  people  as  we  are 
inforced  to  bring  over  hither  by  peradventure,  and 
gathering  them  up  in  sutch  riotous,  lasie  and  in 
fected  places  can  intertaine  themselves  with  other 
thoughts  or  put  on  other  behaviour  than  what  ac 
companies  sutch  disordered  persons,  so  prophane, 
so  riotous,  so  full  of  Mutenie  and  treasonable 
Intendments,  as  I  am  well  to  witness  in  a  parcell 
of  300  which  I  brought  with  me,  of  which  well 
may  I  say  not  many  give  testimonie  besides  their 
names  that  they  are  Christians,  besides  of  sutch 
diseased  and  erased  bodies  as  the  Sea  hither  and 
this  Clime  but  a  little  searching  them,  render  them 
so  unhable,  fainte,  and  desperate  of  recoverie  as 
of  300  not  three  score  may  be  called  forth  or 
imploied  upon  any  labour  or  service." * 

A  year  before,  the  "Council  of  Virginea"  in 
London  had  found  it  necessary  to  exercise  more 
care  in  the  selection  of  immigrants,  and  in  "a 
publication  touching  the  Plantation  there"  it  gave 
public  notice  "that  former  experience  hath  too 
dearly  taught,  how  much  and  manie  waies  it 

1  Brown:  The  Genesis  of  the  United  States,  vol.  i,  p.  506. 


TOBACCO  AND   SLAVERY 

hurteth  to  suffer  Parents  to  disburden  themselves 
of  lascivious  sonnes,  masters  of  bad  servants  and 
wives  of  ill  husbands,  and  so  clogge  the  business 
with  such  an  idle  crue,  as  did  thrust  themselves  in 
the  last  voiage,  that  will  rather  starve  for  hunger, 
than  lay  their  hands  to  labor."  1 

But  even  before  Dale,  that  romantic  figure  John 
Smith,  who  was  none  too  fastidious  in  his  tastes, 
complained  of  the  quality  of  the  material  out  of 
which  he  was  to  fashion  an  English  nation.  Ger 
mans  and  Poles  were  sent  over  to  make  pitch,  tar, 
soap,  ashes,  and  glass,  when  the  colony  could  not  yet 
raise  provisions  enough  for  its  support.  "  When  you 
send  again,"  Smith  was  obliged  to  reply,  "I  entreat 
you  rather  send  but  thirty  carpenters,  husbandmen, 
fishermen,  than  a  thousand  of  such  as  we  have."2 

The  only  drawback  to  the  prosperity  of  the  col 
ony,  Doyle  tells  us,  was  the  abject  character  of  the 
settlers.  But  so  insistent  was  the  demand  for  labor 
that  Dale  recommended  that  England  follow  the 
example  of  Spain  and  "banish  hither  all  offenders 
condemned  to  die  out  of  common  gaols."  As  late 
as  1670  a  Virginian  statute  prohibited  the  further 
importation  of  criminals  because  of  "  the  great  num 
ber  of  felons  and  other  desperate  villains  sent 
hither  from  the  several  prisons  of  England,"  show 
ing  that  long  after  the  Cavalier  migration  the  prac 
tice  of  disposing  of  undesirables  by  shipping  them 

1  Brown:  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  355. 

1  Bancroft:  History  of  the  United  States  of  America,  vol.  i,  p.  95. 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  Virginia  continued.  "There  has  been  a  natural 
tendency  among  Americans,"  an  American  histo 
rian  observes,  "to  insist  that  the  offenses  of  which 
the  transported  malefactors  had  been  convicted 
were  chiefly  political,"  1  and  some  American  writers 
have  made  what  they  consider  a  strong  case  in  being 
able  to  cite  that  after  the  battle  of  Worcester  1610 
prisoners  were  sent  to  Virginia ;  and  two  years  later 
a  license  was  granted  to  one  Richard  Nethersole  to 
transport  a  hundred  Irish  Tories  to  Virginia;  but 
these  exceptions  are  rare,  and  the  number  of  politi 
cal  prisoners  of  whom  we  have  knowledge  is  small 
compared  with  the  large  number  of  criminals  and 
malefactors;  and  it  is  a  matter  of  record  that  the 
death  sentence  was  often  commuted  to  banishment 
to  Virginia.2  There  was  also  another  class  from 
which  the  colony  was  recruited,  men  who  were  not 
criminals  but  whose  lot  was  unbearable,  or  ne'er- 
do-wells  who  welcomed  any  change  for  the  better. 
These  men,  and  later  women  of  the  same  class,  sold 
themselves  into  a  form  of  limited  slavery  by  becom 
ing  "indentured  servants."  For  the  price  of  trans 
portation  and  subsistence  they  bound  themselves 
to  work  for  masters  for  a  term  of  years,  and  at  the 
expiration  of  their  service  they  were  released  from 
bondage  and  had  to  shift  for  themselves.  "Cheap 
labour  is  supplied  by  white  servants,  bound  to  their 

1  Avery:  A  History  of  the  United  States  and  its  People,  vol.  ii,  p.  58. 

3  After  the  restoration,  in  1662,  thirty-four  members  of  the  Privy  Council 
were  constituted  a  Council  for  Foreign  Plantations,  who  were  instructed  to 
consider  the  supply  of  servile  labor  to  the  colonies. 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY 

masters  by  indentures  for  some  such  term  as  six  or 
seven  years ;  they  are  to  some  extent  a  shiftless  and 
degraded  set  of  creatures  from  the  slums  and  jails 
of  English  seaport  towns,  but  many  of  them  are  of 
a  better  sort."1 

Much  has  been  written  about  these  indentured 
servants,  a  few  of  whom  entered  into  bondage  of 
their  own  volition ;  while  others,  paupers  and  crimi 
nals,  were  sold  into  limited  slavery  without  their 
consent.  Some  of  them  at  the  end  of  their  period 
of  service  became  men  of  substance  and  founded 
families  and  fortunes,  but  they  were  the  exception. 
But  although  these  serfs  became  free,  they  did  not 
become  independent;  there  were  causes,  as  we  shall 
see  later,  that  made  them  dependent  on  their  for 
mer  masters. 

Prejudice  and  ignorance  have  gone  to  the  other 
extreme,  and  attempts  have  been  made  to  prove 
that  the  founders  of  what  for  convenience  may  be 
called  the  aristocracy  of  Virginia  and  the  South 
were  these  paupers  and  criminals,  and  Defoe  and 
other  seventeenth  century  English  writers  sedu 
lously  cultivate  that  impression.  While  the  South 
erner  as  a  rule  is  very  proud  of  his  Cavalier  descent 
and  glories  in  it  as  much  as  the  Northerner  does  in 
being  able  to  trace  his  blood  through  the  veins  of 
the  men  who  founded  Massachusetts,  there  have 
been  Southern  writers  who  hold  the  Cavaliers  in 
light  esteem,  just  as  there  have  been  men  of  Puri- 

1  Fiske:  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbours,  vol.  i,  p.  217. 


226          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tan  stock  who  were  the  severest  critics  of  Puri 
tanism.  The  remark  of  Robert  Toombs  in  1860, 
"We  are  the  gentlemen  of  this  country,"  was 
characteristic  of  the  passion  of  the  time  and  the 
contempt  the  South  had  for  the  North;  but  a  well- 
known  Virginian  writer,  Huge  Blair  Grigsby,  had 
no  high  regard  for  the  Cavalier,  whom  he  describes 
as  "essentially  a  slave,  a  compound  slave,  a  slave 
to  the  king  and  a  slave  to  the  Church.  I  look  with 
contempt  on  the  miserable  figment  which  seeks  to 
trace  the  distinguishing  points  of  the  Virginian 
character  to  the  influence  of  those  butterflies  of  the 
British  aristocracy."  Mr.  Grigsby  was  not  happy 
in  his  simile.  Pleasure  loving  these  Cavaliers  were, 
men  who  loved  the  light  and  sun  and  color,  but 
that  stout  old  Cavalier  Governor  with  a  temper 
"peevish  and  brittle,"  Sir  William  Berkeley,  was 
no  butterfly,  and  Strafford  and  Laud  beat  their 
wings  with  some  purpose. 

Instead  of  arbitrarily  and  empirically  attributing 
the  difference  between  Massachusetts  and  Virginia 
to  the  temperamental  difference  that  marks  Round 
head  and  Cavalier,  it  would  be  more  correct  to 
ascribe  it  to  physical  and  economic  conditions. 
The  Massachusetts  man  grew  corn.  The  Virginian 
planted  tobacco.  It  was  the  difference  between 
life  in  a  village  and  life  on  a  feudal  estate.  The 
world's  greatest  luxury,  which  has  become  one  of 
the  world's  greatest  necessities,  worked  a  social  and 
political  revolution  that  was  to  have  lasting  and 


TOBACCO  AND   SLAVERY          227 

far-reaching  consequences.  "A  true  history  of  to 
bacco  would  be  the  history  of  English  and  Ameri 
can  liberty,"  Moncure  Conway  aptly  remarks, 
but  it  would  be  more  than  that,  it  would  be  the 
history  of  the  times  from  Jamestown  to  the  civil 
war.  When  in  1612  John  Rolfe,  that  "honest  and 
discreet  young  Englishman,"  began  the  systematic 
cultivation  of  Virginia  tobacco  little  could  he  fore 
see  that  as  the  unconscious  instrument  of  fate  he 
had  become  the  American  Cadmus,  and  that  his 
tiny  Indian  weed  should  bring  forth  a  crop  of  armed 
men  who  would  build  a  greater  and  more  enduring 
Thebes. 

Virginia  is  a  land  of  rivers,  "a  kind  of  sylvan 
Venice,"  as  Fiske  poetically  describes  it.  The  men 
of  Massachusetts  had  to  hew  their  way  through 
the  unbroken  forest,  and  before  their  settlements 
could  expand  they  must  clear  the  wilderness  and 
engage  in  the  laborious  task  of  road-making,  and 
the  path  of  English  civilization  is  marked  by  good 
roads,  a  legacy  inherited  from  Roman  ancestors. 
The  Virginian  found  his  roads  already  built  in  the 
navigable  rivers,  which  gave  him  cheap  and  con 
venient  transportation  for  his  products  to  the  sea 
board  and  thence  to  his  great  market  in  England; 
but  this  very  facility  of  transport  destroyed  the 
sense  of  community  and  made  less  necessary  the 
small  and  compact  settlements,  where  every  one 
must  do  his  share  in  the  common  work.  The  Lon 
don  Company  that  planted  Virginia  gave  to  the 


228          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

world  the  first  striking  illustration  of  the  fallacy  of 
communism.  The  early  settlers  were  members  of 
an  industrial  army,  whose  labor  was  for  the  com 
munity,  and  who  shared  equally  in  what  it  pro 
duced,  but  that  was  no  incentive  to  work,  and,  as 
usual,  the  idle  fattened  off  the  industrious.  Dale, 
displaying  that  rare  common  sense  that  ever  marked 
him,  changed  the  system  and  gave  to  every  man  the 
proper  incentive  by  being  able  to  profit  from  his 
own  endeavors.  Instead  of  being  a  communist  the 
colonist  became  a  small  land  proprietor,  and  the 
change  had  marked  effect.  Idleness  and  wretched 
ness  gave  way  to  industry  and  reasonable  plenty, 
and  the  later  settler  knew  none  of  the  horrors  of 
famine  that  had  made  the  early  days  of  the  colony 
such  a  grim  story. 

When  the  first  Englishmen  came  to  Virginia  they 
found  the  Indians  cultivating  tobacco  on  a  small 
scale.  It  was  John  Rolfe,  the  first  Englishman  in 
the  New  World  to  marry  a  "foreigner"  by  taking 
to  wife  Pocahontas,  the  daughter  of  Powhatan,  who 
began  to  experiment  with  tobacco,  and  a  few  years 
later  its  cultivation,  "by  far  the  most  momentous 
fact  in  the  history  of  Virginia  in  the  seventeenth 
century," 1  had  become  firmly  established.  Very 
quickly  the  Virginians  saw  they  had  in  tobacco  a 
commodity  which  could  always  find  its  market, 
and  from  this  time  on  it  changed  the  whole  course 
of  events.  It  not  only  modified  social  conditions, 

1  Bruce:  Economic  History  of  Virginia,  vol.  ii,  p.  566. 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY 

but  it  produced  a  new  economic  r'gime.  A  clear 
and  positive  inducement  was  now  offered  for  emi 
gration  such  as  had  not  existed  since  the  first 
dreams  of  gold  and  silver  were  dispelled.  After 
the  first  disillusionment  it  became  difficult  to  per 
suade  men  of  hard  sense  to  go  to  Virginia,  and  we 
have  seen  what  a  wretched  set  of  people  were 
drawn  together  by  the  Company's  communistic 
schemes.  But  those  who  came  to  acquire  wealth 
by  raising  tobacco  were  of  a  better  sort,  men  of 
businesslike  ideas,  who  knew  what  they  wanted  and 
how  to  devote  themselves  to  the  task  of  getting  it. 
With  the  establishment  of  tobacco  culture  there 
began  a  steady  improvement  in  the  character  and 
fortunes  of  the  colonists,  and  the  demand  for  their 
staple  in  Europe  soon  became  so  great  as  forever 
to  end  the  possibility  of  perishing  from  want. 
Henceforth  whatever  a  Virginian  needed  he  could 
buy  with  tobacco.1 

To  raise  tobacco  profitably  it  must  be  grown  on 
a  large  scale,  and  the  little  garden  patch  of  the  first 
cultivators  soon  gave  way  to  the  plantation  of  many 
acres;  and  properly  to  care  for  the  growing  plants, 
to  harvest  the  crop,  to  cure  and  prepare  the  weed 
for  market,  required  a  large  increase  of  agricultural 
labor.  Conditions  in  England  were  peculiarly  pro 
pitious  to  stimulate  emigration,  just  as  two  centu 
ries  later  they  were  the  exciting  cause  to  turn  that 
human  stream  from  Ireland  to  the  land  of  hope  and 

1  Fiske:  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbours,  vol.  i,  p.  170. 


230          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

promise.  The  sixteenth  and  seventeenth  centuries 
witnessed  the  splendid  growth  of  England's  great 
ness  and  rang  with  the  deeds  of  her  great  captains 
and  adventurers  who  laid  the  foundation  for  her 
commercial  supremacy  and  that  vast  over-sea 
empire,  but  the  condition  of  the  mass  of  the  peas 
antry — and  there  existed  at  that  time  a  peasantry  in 
the  true  sense  of  the  word — was  deplorable.  In  re 
viewing  an  age  when  sociological  investigation  was 
unknown  and  the  science  of  statistics  had  not  yet 
been  discovered,  we  are  hampered  by  the  absence 
of  exact  knowledge,  but  there  is  enough  infor 
mation  obtainable  to  show  that  much  discontent 
existed,  and  the  constantly  increasing  poverty  and 
degradation  of  the  peasantry  occupied  the  serious 
attention  of  thinking  men.  There  had  been  an 
enormous  rise  in  prices,  but  no  corresponding  in 
crease  in  wages.  The  farmer  was  in  every  way 
better  off  and  living  i,n  more  comfort  and  luxury 
than  he  had  before  known,  but  the  class  on  whose 
labor  the  farmer  depended  for  his  prosperity,  the 
agricultural  laborer,  was  sinking  lower  and  lower. 
It  was  natural  that  this  state  of  affairs  should 
swell  the  ranks  of  the  vagrants  and  the  criminals, 
that  to  the  idle  and  the  worthless  as  well  as  the 
industrious  and  worthy  the  opportunity  of  begin 
ning  a  new  life  under  more  favorable  circumstances 
should  be  regarded  with  sullen  resignation  or  keen 
enthusiasm.  The  emigrant  has  always  been  drawn 
from  the  two  extremes  of  the  moral  and  tempera- 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY          231 

mental  scale;  he  has  either  been  devil-loving  or 
God-fearing;  the  failure,  the  unstable  man,  who 
having  tried  everything  has  made  a  success  of 
nothing  because  he  has  neither  industry  nor  appli 
cation,  and  who  turns  to  emigration  as  he  has 
played  with  everything  else;  the  resolute,  courageous 
man,  practical  but  imaginative,  who  sees  the  future 
and  has  the  pluck  to  grapple  with  it ;  the  weak,  who 
is  alone  responsible  for  his  own  misfortune;  the 
strong,  who  having  succeeded  is  self-reliant  enough 
to  know  that  with  larger  opportunity  there  will 
come  to  him  a  greater  measure  of  success. 

Times  were  ripe  for  recruiting  Virginia  from  the 
slums  of  London  and  the  rural  villages  of  England, 
and  an  inducement  was  offered  by  the  London 
proprietors  to  their  grantees  to  engage  in  this 
traffic.  The  men  who  subscribed  to  the  company, 
its  financiers  and  original  promoters,  were  given 
vast  tracts  of  land  and  became  really  feudal  lords; 
others  of  smaller  means  could  obtain  a  grant  by 
paying  their  own  passage,  and  for  every  "servant" 
they  brought  with  them  a  further  allotment  of  land 
was  made.  A  rare  combination  of  circumstances 
made  the  scheme  dovetail  to  a  nicety.  In  tobacco 
lay  the  wealth  of  the  Virginian,  to  raise  tobacco  he 
must  have  a  large  plantation,  to  take  care  of  his 
plantation  he  must  have  a  large  body  of  laborers; 
the  larger  the  number  of  laborers  the  greater  the 
number  of  his  acres,  and  England  was  the  breeding- 
ground  to  supply  his  manual  labor. 


232          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

It  may  be  convenient  to  bear  in  mind  a  few 
dates.  It  was  in  1612  that  John  Rolfe  began  the 
cultivation  of  tobacco,  and  in  1616  his  example  had 
been  generally  followed,  and  tobacco  became  the 
life  of  the  colony.  Charles  I  was  sentenced  in  1649, 
forty-two  years  after  the  first  settlers  landed  in 
Jamestown,  and  the  great  Cavalier  exodus  from 
England  did  not  begin  until  the  rigors  of  the  Com 
monwealth  drove  these  broken  followers  of  a  lost 
cause  into  exile.  When  they  came  they  found  no 
handful  of  shivering,  ill-housed  adventurers,  gaunt 
with  famine  and  dying  from  disease,  as  Lord  Dela 
ware  had  found  forty  years  earlier.  They  came 
to  no  "starving  time."  These  Cavaliers,  driven 
forth  from  England  by  political  persecution  as  the 
Puritans  had  been  driven  forth  by  religious  perse 
cution  more  than  a  quarter  of  a  century  before, 
came  to  a  land  that  smiled  on  them  and  invited 
them  to  remain,  a  land  that  welcomed  them  with  the 
caressing  softness  of  a  woman's  wiles;  a  land  where 
the  skies  were  bright  and  the  air  balmy,  where  there 
were  streams  to  be  fished  and  game  to  be  hunted, 
where  there  was  good  cheer  in  abundance.  It  was 
a  prosperous  and,  for  that  time,  large  community 
to  which  they  came.  There  were  no  signs  of  pov 
erty  or  distress.  The  wooden  houses  were  roomy 
and  well  aired,  "and  the  settlers  already  point  to 
them  with  some  degree  of  pride  as  more  comfortable 
than  the  houses  of  laboring  men  in  England." 
This  was  in  1624,  and  the  succeeding  quarter  of  a 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY    233 

century  had  still  further  improved  their  material 
conditions.  They  found  there,  also,  many  Puritans, 
most  of  whom  had  come  from  the  bleak  north,  but 
many  had  emigrated  from  England.  It  detracts 
nothing  from  the  greatness  of  the  Cavaliers  and 
their  descendants,  those  really  great  men  who  did 
so  much  to  make  the  greatness  of  America  and  to 
give  birth  to  a  nation,  to  the  memory  of  Washington 
and  the  fame  of  Madison  and  Monroe,  Lee  and 
Jefferson  and  Jackson,  the  descendants  of  Cavaliers, 
to  state  the  facts  of  history. 

In  a  previous  chapter  I  have  dwelt  at  some 
length  on  the  effect  of  climatic  conditions  and  phys 
ical  environment  on  race  development,  and  it  is  a 
subject  of  such  vast  importance  and  so  little  has  its 
significance  been  understood  and  appreciated,  that 
I  feel  compelled  again  to  refer  to  it,  because  of  the 
bearing  it  has  on  the  study  of  the  American  people 
as  we  trace  their  origin  through  Virginia  and  Massa 
chusetts.  The  American  to-day  does  not  under 
stand  why  the  men  of  his  own  race  living  in  the  East 
are  different  from  those  of  the  West,  although  he 
recognizes  and  admits  this  difference,  but  with  a 
hasty  generalization,  conveniently  and  quickly  to 
dispose  of  a  too  complex  problem  that  has  no  imme 
diate  bearing  on  the  things  of  the  hour,  attributes 
it  to  the  fact  that  the  West  is  "new"  and  the  East 
is  "old."  But  age,  that  is  a  relative  term  only.  Far 
deeper  than  mere  years  in  forming  character  and 
habits  of  thought  are  those  towering  mountains, 


234          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

those  arid  plains,  those  long,  burning  summers, 
those  winters  of  Arctic-like  severity,  that  feeling  of 
boundless  space  and  unlimited  opportunity,  that  is 
the  inheritance  of  every  Westerner.  One  must  be 
of  the  West  to  know  and  share  this  feeling.  The 
Westerner  may  live  in  a  city,  a  great  city  that  is 
a  part  of  the  complex  scheme  of  civilization,  a 
city  whose  sudden  extinction  would  for  so  long  as  it 
takes  men  to  recover  from  their  astonishment 
disarrange  the  complex  scheme,  and  yet  it  is  not 
the  city  that  makes  him  what  he  is,  but  it  is  the 
unconscious  influence  of  environment.  The  city  is 
to  him  what  the  port  is  to  the  sailor;  but  it  is  the 
ocean  that  the  sailor  loves,  not  the  port;  it  is  the 
battle  with,  and  the  mastery  over  the  ocean  that 
make  the  sailor  what  he  is;  it  is  the  struggle  and 
the  victory,  the  risk  and  the  toil,  the  constant 
vigilance,  the  hope,  the  despair,  the  final  triumph; 
the  self-reliance  wrought  out  of  danger,  the  majesty 
and  scorn  and  treachery  of  the  implacable  foe  that 
have  bred  a  race  of  conquerors.  And  all  that  the 
sea  is  to  the  sailor  to  an  adventurous  people  is  a 
great  and  only  partially  developed  country,  where 
mountains  must  be  tunnelled,  and  rivers  spanned, 
and  plains  brought  under  cultivation ;  where  space, 
illimitable  space,  makes  men  breathe  deep,  where 
mountains  and  plains  speak  of  the  infinite  and  are 
a  perpetual  challenge  to  the  daring  to  conquer  or 
to  be  crushed. 

The  Appalachian  Mountains,  which  stretch  from 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY    235 

New  England  to  the  South,  are  in  New  England 
only  from  fifty  to  eighty  miles  from  the  coast,  while 
in  the  south  they  are  two  hundred  and  fifty  miles 
from  the  ocean.  Physical  conditions,  therefore, 
made  the  Englishman  who  settled  in  Massachu 
setts  cling  close  to  the  coast  and  did  not  affect  his 
territorial  ideas.  The  Englishman  who  went  to 
Virginia  had  a  much  larger  area  in  which  to  work, 
and  soon  acquired  that  desire  for  expansion  which 
later  became  a  part  of  the  early  American  character. 
In  New  England,  which  had  long  lain  under  a 
heavy  glacial  deposit,  much  and  arduous  work  was 
required  before  the  land  could  be  broken  with  the 
plough;  in  Virginia  the  land  " produce th,  with  very 
great  increase,  whatsoever  is  committed  into  the 
Bowells  of  it,"  writes  an  enthusiastic  anonymous 
pamphleteer,  in  1649,1  and  he  regrets  that  those 
industrious  New  Englanders  had  not  planted  them 
selves  in  Virginia,  for  in  New  England  so  sterile 
was  the  soil  that  "except  a  herring  be  put  into  the 
hole  that  you  set  the  corn  or  maize  in,  it  will  not 
come  up";  while  in  Virginia  is  "a  fat  rich  soile 
everywhere  watered  with  many  fine  springs,  small 
rivulets,  and  wholesome  waters."  It  was  a  very 
delightful  land  to  which  these  people  had  been  led. 
The  winters  were  keen,  but  the  summers  were  long 
and  warm,  which  invited  the  free,  outdoor  life  so 
dear  to  the  heart  of  the  Englishman,  who  thinks 
in  brick  and  mortar,  but  loves  nature.  The  great 

1  "  A  Perfect  Description  of  Virginia,"  Force,  vol.  ii,  p.  8. 


236          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

woods,  the  long  stretches  of  greensward,  the  rivers 
teeming  with  life,  the  abundance  of  game,  the  fer 
tility  of  the  soil,  made  a  strong  appeal  to  him, 
and  induced  him  soon  to  expand  beyond  the  limits 
of  the  original  settlement,  and  inclination  had  a 
powerful  stimulus  in  necessity. 

The  cultivation  of  tobacco  requires  a  virgin  soil. 
As  soon  as  the  land  was  cleared  it  was  planted  in 
tobacco,  and  as  artificial  fertilization  was  then  un 
known  and  the  scientific  rotation  of  crops  had  not 
been  learned,  in  from  three  to  eight  years  the  land 
was  exhausted  and  worthless  for  tobacco  planting. 
When  the  plantations  could  no  longer  be  worked 
with  profit  they  were  abandoned,  the  forest  was 
again  invaded  and  the  frontier  of  the  settlement 
still  further  pushed  into  the  wilderness.  In  1685, 
"although  the  population  of  Virginia  did  not  ex 
ceed  the  number  of  inhabitants  in  the  single  parish 
of  Stepney,  London,  nevertheless  they  had  acquired 
ownership  in  plantations  that  spread  over  the  same 
area  as  England  itself."  1  Under  this  state  of  affairs 
there  naturally  grew  up  a  class  of  great  landed  pro 
prietors.  Conditions,  it  would  seem,  should  have 
created  a  class  of  metayer  tenants,  or  peasant  pro 
prietors,  from  whom  would  have  sprung  the  yeo 
manry  of  America  as  their  forbears  had  been  the 
yeomanry  of  England.  The  causes  that  arrested 
this  social  condition  are  obscure,  and  there  is  little 
in  contemporary  writings  or  in  the  researches  of 

1  Semple:  American  History  and  its  Geographic  Conditions,  p.  44. 


TOBACCO  AND  SLAVERY    237 

later  investigators  to  throw  much  light  on  the  sub 
ject.  It  is  possible  that  in  the  early  days  of  the 
colony  there  was  no  intermediate  class  between  the 
landowners,  the  proprietors  or  the  representatives 
of  the  proprietors  of  the  London  Company,  and 
the  sweepings  of  the  jail  and  the  slums,  the  inden 
tured  servants  or  the  victims  of  the  kidnappers  who 
in  effect  had  been  sold  into  slavery.  Between  the 
servants  of  the  company  and  their  masters  there 
existed  a  wide  gulf  not  lightly  to  be  bridged  in  a  day 
when  class  distinctions  were  so  firmly  established, 
and  there  was  nothing  in  the  political  or  social 
organization  of  the  colony  that  would  bring  men 
together  or  make  them  forget  class  in  the  perils  of 
a  common  danger.  "In  none  of  the  other  colonies 
were  class  distinctions  so  clearly  marked  and  so 
thoroughly  believed  in.  After  the  negroes  came  the 
indented  servants  and  poor  whites,  with  a  distinct 
position  from  which  few  of  them  arose;  then  the 
middle  class  of  small  proprietors,  who  were  distinct 
but  constantly  rising  into  the  class  of  the  great 
landlords  who  were  the  rulers  of  the  province,  the 
creators  of  opinion,  and  always  the  most  typical 
and  representative  men  of  Virginia.  There  was  a 
constant  effort  to  maintain  position  or  to  acquire 
it."1 

In  New  England  the  life  was  that  of  a  community 
bound  together  by  every  consideration  of  necessity 
and  always  fearing  a  relentless  and  treacherous  foe, 

1  Fisher:  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times,  vol.  i,  p.  70. 


238          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

but  in  Virginia  this  ever-present  menace  of  an 
Indian  massacre  did  not  exist.  Many  of  the  inden 
tured  servants  eventually  worked  out  their  period  of 
bondage  and  as  free  men,  "redemptioners,"  as  they 
then  were,  ought  to  have  become  peasantry  to  feed 
the  yeomanry,  as  the  yeomanry  has  always  fed  and 
revitalized  the  aristocracy.  But  when  that  time 
came  it  was  too  late,  for  Virginia  was  then  a  colony 
of  great  landed  proprietors,  and  there  was  no  place 
for  the  yeoman  with  his  small  holdings.  Doyle's 
conclusion,  I  think,  is  correct  that  "just  as  in  earlier 
English  history  the  free  socage  tenant  often  sur 
rendered  that  position  and  voluntarily  took  a 
dependent  place  in  the  feudal  chain,  so  we  may 
believe  that  in  Virginia  the  small  holder  would  find 
his  position  untenable,  and  seek  security  and 
society  where  it  alone  could  be  had,  on  the  planta 
tion  of  his  richer  neighbor."  *  With  the  continued 
increase  in  the  growth  and  wealth  of  the  colony 
and  an  insistent  demand  for  cheap  agricultural 
labor,  which  placed  no  premium  on  intelligence 
but  was  only  valued  according  to  its  strength  and 
docility,  the  opportunity  to  create  a  white  peasantry 
had  been  lost  and  slavery,  later  to  become  the  great 
est  social  and  political  issue  in  America,  was  an 
economic  fact. 

The  year  1619  is  memorable  to  the  student  of 
American  development.  It  forged  the  shackles  of 
American  slavery  and  broke  the  first  link  that 

1  Doyle:  English  Colonies  in  America,  vol.  i,  p.  188. 


TOBACCO  AND   SLAVERY          239 

bound  these  feeble  colonists  to  the  mother  country. 
It  sowed  slavery  and  reaped  freedom.  It  deprived 
men  of  their  liberty  and  made  them  creatures  at 
the  whim  of  their  masters,  and  it  taught  men  that 
to  be  masters  of  themselves  they  must  be  their  own 
rulers.  Had  the  Puritan  been  able  to  stand  outside 
himself  and  see  life  as  from  a  high  mountain,  he 
might  well  have  believed  that  he  was  witnessing  in 
the  flesh  that  eternal  conflict  between  the  forces  of 
good  and  evil  which  was  a  fundamental  article 
of  his  creed. 

In  that  year,  on  the  thirteenth  of  July,  the  first 
assembly  of  Burgesses  met  in  Jamestown,  the  first 
experiment  of  constitutional  government  in  the  New 
World.  Heretofore  Virginia  had  been  "little  better 
than  a  penal  settlement,  ruled  by  martial  law,"  now 
it  was  given  some  of  the  rights  of  self-government; 
rights  which  Englishmen  have  never  surrendered 
once  they  have  been  granted  or  won.  These  Vir 
ginians,  but  Englishmen  first,  were  not  to  prove 
recreant  to  their  traditions.  And  in  this  same  year 
slavery  was  introduced  into  Virginia,  when  a  Dutch 
vessel  dropped  anchor  in  the  James  and  its  master 
sold  his  cargo  of  twenty  blacks.  From  that  time 
there  were  always  enslaved  negroes  in  Virginia,  but 
it  was  not  until  the  last  quarter  of  the  seventeenth 
century  that  there  was  a  heavy  accession  of  the 
slave  population.  In  1670  the  colony  comprised, 
according  to  Governor  Berkeley's  estimate,  40,000 
people,  of  whom  32,000  were  free  whites,  6000  were 


240          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

indentured  white  servants,  and  2000  were  negroes. 
In  that  year  a  statute  of  Virginia  enacted  that  "all 
servants,  not  being  Christians,  imported  into  this 
country  by  shipping  shall  be  slaves,"  and  as  there 
were  some  pious  masters  who  attempted  to  convert 
their  slaves,  it  was  later  enacted  that  "conversion 
to  the  Christian  faith  doth  not  make  free."  For  an 
owner  to  kill  his  slave  "from  extremity  of  correc 
tion,"  was  not  a  felony,  "since  it  cannot  be  pre 
sumed  that  prepensed  malice,  which  alone  makes 
murther  felony,  should  induce  any  man  to  destroy 
his  own  estate."  In  1700  there  were  probably 
6000  negroes  and  60,000  whites,  but  it  was  not 
until  after  the  Asiento  article  of  the  Treaty  of 
Utrecht  of  1713  gave  to  England  a  monopoly  of 
the  African  slave  trade  that  the  kidnapping  of  black 
men  became  a  recognized  and  respectable  business ; 
and  so  profitable  had  the  trade  become  and  so  great 
was  the  demand  for  servile  labor,  that  in  1750  there 
were  believed  to  be  250,000  negro  slaves  in  Virginia, 
and  an  equal  number  of  whites. 

It  is  not  necessary  at  this  time  to  deal  further  with 
the  subject  of  slavery  or  the  political,  social  and 
moral  effect  of  the  institution  and  the  psychological 
influence  which  it  exercised,  as  in  the  logical  de 
velopment  of  the  theme  we  shall  see  how  powerful 
that  influence  became  and  how  momentous  its 
consequences. 


CHAPTER  XV 

VIRGINIA   AN   ARISTOCRATIC    OLIGARCHY 

WE  have  already  shown  that  the  men  who  first 
settled  Virginia  were  not  substantially  different 
from  those  who  exiled  themselves  to  Massachusetts, 
and  Virginia,  like  the  northern  colony,  built  a  social 
system  on  the  feeble  foundation  laid  by  men  who 
were  deficient  in  those  qualities  that  are  necessary 
for  nation  building.  The  strength  of  Massachusetts 
was  the  Puritan,  not  the  Pilgrim.  The  character  of 
Virginia  was  made  by  the  Cavalier,  not  by  the  men 
who  followed  John  Smith,  but  here  the  parallel 
ends.  The  Pilgrims,  too  gentle  and  unresisting  to 
oppose  the  force  of  stronger  wills,  were  merged  in 
the  Puritans,  to  the  advantage  of  the  latter.  The 
Pilgrim  strain  in  the  Puritan  blood  was  a  refining 
and  softening  influence  that  did  not  destroy  the 
Puritan  qualities,  but  brought  a  ray  of  sunshine 
into  the  darkened  recesses  of  minds  abnormally 
self-centred.  In  Virginia  it  was  otherwise.  The  de 
scendants  of  the  first  settlers  did  not  cease  to  exist 
after  the  coming  of  the  Cavaliers,  they  were  not 
absorbed  by  a  stronger  or  coarser  mentality,  they 
did  not  intermarry,  but  both  lived  side  by  side, 
and  each  influenced  the  other  to  the  injury  of  both. 
As  the  Cavaliers  rose  they  pressed  down  the  class 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

below  them  and  more  sharply  emphasized  the 
distinction  of  class.  In  any  state  of  civilization 
where  there  is  a  wide  gulf  between  classes  the  con 
sequences  are  always  detrimental.  The  possession 
of  power,  the  knowledge  that  the  people  may  be 
exploited  with  impunity  and  cannot  successfully 
resist,  makes  the  upper  and  ruling  class  selfish, 
arrogant  and  unrestrained;  but  there  is  also  devel 
oped  a  high  level  of  social  refinement;  there  is  as 
much  luxury  as  is  compatible  with  the  means  to 
gratify  it,  and  among  a  few  an  extraordinary  men 
tal  culture  that  amazes  the  world  by  its  boldness 
and  philosophic  insight.  The  lower  class  becomes 
resigned  to  its  subordinate  position;  it  is  deprived 
of  the  great  incentive,  ambition ;  and  the  mass  con 
stantly  sinks  lower. 

Virginia  strikingly  exhibits  the  working  of  this 
social  law.  It  developed  a  race  of  arrogant,  quick 
tempered  aristocrats,  and  a  large  number  of  men 
extraordinarily  endowed  mentally,  whose  philo 
sophic  grasp  is  still  the  admiration  of  the  world ;  and 
simultaneously  it  gave  birth  to  "the  mean  whites," 
a  degraded,  shiftless,  mentally  deficient  class,  whose 
maleficent  influence  made  the  South  for  many 
generations  far  behind  the  North  in  culture  and 
civilization  and  lowered  the  general  level  of  intelli 
gence.  A  single  drop  of  poison  corrupts  the  whole 
blood.  Against  the  corrupting  influence  of  "the 
mean  whites"  all  the  genius  and  wisdom  of  philo 
sophers  and  humanitarians  and  statesmen  were 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      243 

powerless.  The  men  who  have  made  some  parts 
of  the  South  "a  dark  and  bloody  ground,"  where  to 
this  day  the  only  law  known  is  the  law  of  the  rifle 
and  the  knife,  wrhere  dense  ignorance  prevails  and 
superstition  holds  sway,  are  the  legacy  of  this 
colonial  era  and  its  social  system. 

Just  as  the  dominant  and  lasting  impression  was 
made  on  New  England  when  the  religious  persecu 
tion  of  Charles  I  drove  the  Puritans  to  build  new 
temples  in  the  wilderness  of  the  New  World,  so  the 
character  of  Virginia  was  laid  when  the  political 
persecution  of  the  successor  to  Charles  I  drove  the 
Cavaliers  to  find  an  asylum  on  the  banks  of  the 
rivers  and  streams  of  Virginia.  The  great  Puritan 
hegira  covered  about  thirteen  years.  The  Cavalier 
migration  to  Virginia  began  seven  years  after 
Charles's  power  for  evil  had  ceased  to  exist,  and 
lasted  eleven  years.  There  is  here  a  remarkable 
correspondence  of  time  and  cause,  and  the  coin 
cidence  is  still  further  emphasized  by  the  almost 
identical  increase  in  the  population  of  the  two 
colonies.  The  heavy  hand  of  the  Church  forced 
20,000  Puritans  into  exile.  Cromwell's  root  and 
branch  policy  swelled  the  white  population  of 
Virginia  from  15,000  in  1649  to  38,000  in  1670. 

Nothing  has  become  more  firmly  fixed  in  the 
minds  of  perhaps  a  majority  of  Americans  than 
the  belief  that  the  Cavaliers  were  nearly  all  men  of 
title  and  long  descent,  and  the  Puritans  or  Round 
heads  were  drawn  from  the  people  or  lower  classes. 


244          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Many  great  noblemen  and  landed  squires  without 
title,  it  is  true,  supported  Charles  I  and  were  thus 
enrolled  in  the  Cavalier  party,  but  in  the  parlia 
mentary  ranks  are  to  be  found  the  names  of  the 
holders  of  some  of  the  most  historical  peerages  in 
the  kingdom;  and  the  great  leader  in  the  cause  of 
parliamentary  government,  John  Hampden,  whose 
refusal  to  pay  ship  money  lit  the  torch  that  flamed 
into  rebellion,  was  entitled  to  the  designation  of 
" gentleman";  and  so  were  Pym  and  Vane  and 
Cromwell  and  many  others,  all  men  of  gentle  blood. 
The  distinction  between  Cavalier  and  Roundhead 
was  no  more  a  difference  in  respect  to  lineage  or 
social  rank  than  the  analogous  distinction  between 
Tory  and  Whig;  no  more  distinction  than  to-day 
Liberal  or  Conservative  in  England  or  Republican 
or  Democrat  in  the  United  States  connotes  wealth 
or  station.  There  are  great  territorial  magnates 
who  can  trace  their  descent  back  to  the  mists  of 
antiquity  who  train  with  the  Conservative  party 
just  as  men  of  equal  birth  and  rank  and  wealth 
are  Liberals;  in  America,  it  is  impossible  to  tell  a 
man's  wealth  or  intellectual  attainments  or  social 
status  by  his  political  affiliations.  It  is  important 
to  correct  a  historical  fable  that  has  become  ac 
cepted  as  a  historical  truth. 

American  writers  have  made  much  use  of  the 
term  "English  aristocracy,"  with  the  implication 
that  in  England  there  exists  a  caste  or  class  of 
special  privilege  apart  from  the  people,  who  are 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      245 

necessarily  excluded  from  it.  In  that  sense  of  the 
term  there  is  no  aristocracy  in  England,  and  never 
has  been.  Macaulay  points  out  the  peculiar  "rela 
tion  in  which  the  nobility  stood  here  to  the  com 
monalty.  There  was  a  strong  aristocracy;  but  it 
was  of  all  hereditary  aristocracies  the  least  insolent 
and  exclusive.  It  had  none  of  the  invidious  char 
acter  of  a  caste.  It  was  constantly  receiving  mem 
bers  from  the  people,  and  constantly  sending  down 
members  to  mingle  with  the  people.  Any  gentleman 
might  become  a  peer,  the  younger  son  of  a  peer  was 
but  a  gentleman.  Grandsons  of  peers  yielded  pre 
cedence  to  newly  made  knights."  The  dignity  of 
knighthood,  he  tells  us,  was  not  beyond  the  reach 
of  any  man  who  was  worthy  of  it;  it  was  no  disgrace 
for  the  daughter  of  a  duke,  a  royal  duke  even,  to 
espouse  a  commoner;  "pedigrees  as  long,  and 
scutcheons  as  old,  were  to  be  found  out  of  the 
House  of  Lords  as  in  it."  The  constitution  of  the 
House  of  Commons  promoted  the  intermixture  of 
classes.  Side  by  side  with  the  goldsmiths,  the 
drapers  and  the  grocers  who  represented  the  com 
mercial  towns,  were  men  who  in  any  other  country 
would  have  been  called  noblemen.  The  heirs  of 
great  peers  who  sat  in  the  House  of  Commons  as 
representatives  of  the  people,  and  not  because  of 
their  prospective  enjoyment  of  a  title,  "naturally 
became  as  zealous  for  its  privileges  as  any  of  the 
humble  burgesses  with  whom  they  were  mingled. 
Thus  our  democracy  was,  from  an  early  period, 


246          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

the  most  aristocratic,  and  our  aristocracy  the  most 
democratic  in  the  world;  a  peculiarity  which  has 
lasted  down  to  the  present  day,  and  which  has  pro 
duced  many  important  moral  and  political  effects." l 
It  has  been  a  subject  of  much  speculation  what 
peculiar  influence  made  it  possible  for  the  men  of 
the  South  to  join  the  men  of  the  North  in  resisting 
common  oppression,  inasmuch  as  they  were  drawn 
from  different  classes  and  their  outlook  of  life  was 
so  unlike.  But  there  is  no  mystery  about  it.  They 
were  men  of  the  same  stock,  with  the  same  ideas 
and  the  same  ideals.  They  reached  the  same  ends 
through  different  ways.  Religious  persecution  made 
the  Puritan  no  more  resolute  for  liberty  than  politi 
cal  persecution  made  the  Cavalier.  Both  had  been 
defiant  in  England :  the  one  had  proved  it  by  refus 
ing  submission  to  things  spiritual,  the  other  had 
risen  in  opposition  to  the  temporal  power,  and  they 
brought  the  same  spirit  of  defiance  with  them  across 
the  sea.  When  Charles  I  threatened  to  chastise  the 
rebellious  colony  of  Massachusetts,  those  born 
rebels,  with  no  thought  of  surrender,  threw  up  a 
fort  and  mounted  their  pop-guns  to  defy  the  might 
of  England.  When  Cromwell  sent  an  expedition 
to  make  Virginia  understand  that  he  was  master, 
those  haughty  Virginians  drew  up  a  treaty  of  peace 
that  reads  more  like  the  terms  dictated  by  a 
sovereign  nation  than  a  weak  colony.  They  were 
always  the  same,  those  quiet  Puritans  and  those 

1  Macaulay:  History  of  England,  vol.  i,  pp.  19-20. 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      247 

laughter-loving  Virginians;  it  is  only  the  historian 
who  has  made  them  different. 

To  us  it  is  of  less  importance  whether  Virginia 
was  founded  by  Cavalier  or  Roundhead,  it  is  the 
consequences  that  compel  our  study.  It  was  the 
accident  of  the  tobacco  plant  and  climate  that  made 
it  possible  for  an  aristocracy  to  thrive  in  Virginia, 
and  an  aristocracy  it  was  in  every  sense  of  the  word. 
It  absorbed  into  its  order  all  political  and  social 
power.  It  was  an  oligarchy  as  well  as  an  aristocracy. 
It  held  with  firm  grip  military  as  well  as  civil  au 
thority.  To  it  the  Church  was  subservient.  It  did 
not  receive  members  from  the  people,  nor  was  it 
"constantly  sending  down  members  to  mingle  with 
the  people."  Its  power,  its  arrogance  and  its  pride 
made  it  a  more  haughty  and  exclusive  aristo 
cracy  than  any  then  existing  in  Europe.  And  all 
this  —  interesting  enough  though  it  is  to  the  stu 
dent  of  social  institutions  —  would  be  of  little  mo 
ment  if  we  were  not  able  to  trace  back  to  this 
aristocracy  certain  American  characteristics  and 
institutions  that  have  become  part  of  the  American 
race  and  American  civilization.  The  American  is  a 
blend  of  the  Puritan  and  the  Cavalier,  to  accept  an 
inexact  terminology  so  rich  in  contrast;  a  mixture 
of  Massachusetts  and  Virginia;  a  product  of  the 
corn  that  ripened  slowly  under  northern  skies  and 
the  tobacco  that  sprung  into  life  in  the  soil  of  the 
south.  The  influence  of  Massachusetts  is  there,  but 
so  also  is  that  of  Virginia ;  and  great  as  the  influence 


248          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

of  Massachusetts,  that  of  Virginia  is  no  less.  It 
was  tobacco  that  made  Virginia  so  different  from 
Massachusetts ;  it  was  Virginia  that  made  the  Ameri 
can  so  different  from  what  he  would  have  been 
had  another  Massachusetts  taken  root  in  the  South. 
When  the  Cavaliers  came  to  Virginia  they  found 
a  thriving  community  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  profit 
able  monopoly.  Many  of  the  newcomers  had  been 
badly  crippled  in  estate  by  devotion  to  a  cause  that 
was  fated  to  be  lost  —  curious  the  eternal  weaving  of 
the  same  pattern  in  the  great  fabric  of  history ;  two 
hundred  years  later  the  descendants  of  these  same 
Cavaliers  championed  a  cause,  and  again  they  lost 
and  suffered  —  but  many  of  them  were  still  suffi 
ciently  endowed  to  be  able  to  resume  life  under  cir 
cumstances  very  similar  to  those  they  had  known 
in  England.  For  them  there  was  only  one  thing  to 
do,  and  that  was  to  plant  tobacco  and  enjoy  its 
profits.  They  acquired  large  grants  of  land,  they 
worked  their  plantations  with  white  servants  and 
slaves;  the  great  house  reproduced  as  nearly  as 
possible  the  castle  or  the  manor  house  of  England; 
its  master  looked  after  his  lands  and  servants 
and  slaves  as  in  the  old  days  he  had  directed 
the  harvesting  of  his  crops  and  taken  a  paternal 
interest  in  the  welfare  of  his  tenantry.  In  England 
property  passed  from  father  to  the  first-born  son 
and  was  entailed.  Being  Englishmen  and  having 
property  to  devise,  they  established  the  custom  of 
primogeniture  and  the  law  of  entail. 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      249 

There  was  no  such  law  in  Massachusetts,  and  the 
accident  of  birth  counted  for  little  in  favor  of  one 
son  over  another.  In  grafting  an  "aristocratic "  cus 
tom  on  the  new  civilization  of  Virginia  proof  has 
been  found  of  the  aristocracy  of  Virginia  contrasted 
with  the  democracy  of  Massachusetts,  which  is 
further  strengthened  by  the  difference  between  the 
political  system  of  the  two  colonies.  But  economic 
rather  than  social  causes  developed  those  distinc 
tions.  Tobacco  could  not  be  profitably  cultivated 
except  on  a  large  scale,  and  to  divide  up  an  estate 
among  many  children  would  be  to  benefit  none 
and  impoverish  all.  The  English  law  and  custom, 
despite  its  manifest  injustice  and  often  injurious 
results,  worked  reasonably  well,  and  the  Englishmen 
saw  no  reason  to  make  a  change.  In  Massachusetts 
conditions  were  different.  There  were  no  large 
estates  to  be  protected  from  loss  by  division ;  wealth 
was  commercial  rather  than  landed.  A  system 
that  seemed  to  be  peculiarly  adapted  to  the  needs 
of  Virginia  would  have  been  out  of  place  in  Massa 
chusetts. 

Considerations  equally  cogent  resulted  in  local 
institutions  dissimilar  in  the  two  colonies.  In 
Massachusetts  the  people  lived  in  small  congrega 
tions  or  communities  clustered  around  the  meeting 
house,  each  intended  to  be  a  petty,  self-governing 
republic  and  reproducing  in  a  way  the  Roman  city 
state;  whose  people  could  rally  for  support  and 
mutual  defense;  where  the  sense  of  fellowship  was 


250          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

very  strong,  and  where  inclination  and  self-interest 
fostered  the  spirit  of  close  companionship.  In  a 
community  thus  organized  the  natural  system  of 
government  was  the  mass  meeting,  where  all  the 
males  took  part  in  the  proceedings  and  shared  in 
the  advantages  and  responsibilities  of  citizenship. 
This  logically  developed  into  that  peculiarly  New 
England  institution  the  town  meeting,  the  local  par 
liament,  where  its  affairs  are  discussed  in  public  and 
every  person  may  have  a  voice  in  his  own  government. 
The  town  meeting  was  impossible  in  Virginia, 
because  in  place  of  the  settlement  and  town  of 
Massachusetts  there  were  those  plantations  of  many 
thousand  acres,  which  were  so  widely  separated 
"  that  no  man  could  have  seen  his  neighbor  without 
looking  through  a  telescope,  or  to  be  heard  by  him 
without  firing  off  a  gun."  There  was  no  sense  of 
community,  of  touching  elbows  with  one's  neigh 
bors,  of  being  dependent  upon  them  and  creating  the 
spirit  of  helpful  and  free  assistance,  which  develops 
one  type  of  local  civilization.  The  Virginian  was 
developed  by  his  isolation.  The  English  system  of 
the  parish  and  the  vestry  was  transported  to  Vir 
ginia,  and  the  vestrymen,  at  first  elected  by  the 
parish,  were  soon  given  power  to  fill  vacancies, 
which  made  the  vestry  a  close  corporation  and 
centred  local  authority  in  a  few  hands.  It  was 
foreign  to  the  English  spirit  of  genuine  representa 
tive  government,  and  gave  great  dissatisfaction,  and 
could  not  last. 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      251 

It  has  been  said  with  equal  inexactness  that 
Massachusetts  was  Nonconformist  and  Virginia 
Church  of  England,  and  that  the  religion  of  the  two 
colonies  was  a  factor  as  important  in  differentiating 
them  as  the  social  status  of  the  founders  of  the  two 
colonies,  but  this  like  all  generalizations,  is  true  only 
so  far  as  it  goes.  In  1638,  which  was  eleven  years 
before  the  beginning  of  the  great  Cavalier  exodus, 
there  were  believed  to  be  a  thousand  Puritans  in 
Virginia,  or  seven  per  cent  of  the  total  population, 
but  the  time  was  soon  to  come  when  Virginia 
should  almost  equal  Massachusetts  in  theological 
bigotry.  In  1642  Sir  William  Berkeley  came  to 
Virginia  as  its  governor,  and  to  him  Puritanism  was 
a  heresy  that  merited  only  sharp  treatment.  The 
year  after  his  arrival  the  Assembly  passed  an  act 
"for  the  preservation  of  the  purity  of  doctrine  and 
unity  of  the  Church,"  which  enacted  "that  all 
ministers  whatsoever,  who  shall  reside  in  the 
colony,  are  to  be  conformed  to  the  orders  and  con 
stitution  of  the  Church  of  England,  and  not  other 
wise  to  be  admitted  to  teach  or  preach  publicly  or 
privately,  and  that  the  Governor  and  Council  do 
take  care  that  all  nonconformists,  upon  notice  of 
them,  shall  be  compelled  to  depart  the  colony  with 
all  convenience." 

In  1662,  under  a  codification  of  the  statutes  of 
the  colony,  conformity  was  required  and  a  tax  was 
laid  for  the  support  of  the  Established  Church; 
Quakers  were  persecuted  even  as  they  were  in 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Massachusetts.  If  no  Quakers  were  hanged  in  Vir 
ginia  as  they  were  in  New  England,  Jefferson  says, 
"it  was  not  owing  to  the  moderation  of  the  Church, 
or  spirit  of  the  legislature,  as  may  be  inferred  from 
the  law  itself;  but  to  historical  circumstances  which 
have  not  been  handed  down  to  us."  l  Puritans  were 
required  to  take  the  oath  of  obedience  and  su 
premacy;  a  penalty  of  two  thousand  pounds  of 
tobacco  was  imposed  upon  " schismatical  persons" 
who  refused  to  baptize  their  children. 

The  Puritan's  passionate  love  for  education, 
which  was  part  of  his  creed,  finds  no  response  in 
Virginia,  and  Berkeley's  oft  quoted  Dei  gratia,  "I 
thank  God,  there  are  no  free  schools  nor  printing; 
for  learning  has  brought  disobedience  and  heresy 
and  sects  into  the  world  and  printing  has  divulged 
them,  and  libels  against  the  best  government. 
God  save  us  from  both,"  has  been  cited  to  prove 
that  the  narrow  Puritan  was  in  truth  more  liberal 
than  the  so-called  liberal  Virginian.  But  Berkeley's 
attitude  was  logical  and  is  easily  understood.  In 
New  England  servile  labor  was  almost  unknown, 
while  in  Virginia  it  was  growing  larger  every  year 
and  the  Virginians  believed  that  servants  and  slaves 
were  necessary  for  the  prosperity  of  the  colony; 
and  the  fewer  free  schools  the  less  the  output  of 
the  printing-press,  to  that  extent  the  less  danger 
that  servants  would  be  encouraged  to  become 
masters  or  slaves  would  aspire  to  their  freedom. 

1  Jefferson:  Notes  on  Virginia,  p.  233. 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      253 

We  must  remember,  however,  that  the  govern 
ing  class  of  Virginia  was  not  deficient  in  culture  or 
a  knowledge  of  the  classics.  After  the  Restoration 
the  corresponding  class  in  England  had  distinctly 
retrograded,  and  the  character  of  the  squirearchy 
may  be  read  in  the  pages  of  the  prose  Homer 
of  human  nature,  as  Byron  termed  Fielding;  but 
the  Virginians  had  become  stronger  and  intellectu 
ally  better  men.  Every  great  Virginian  family  had 
its  tutor,  usually  an  Episcopal  clergyman,  who 
directed  the  education  of  the  sons  of  the  house,  and 
when  they  outgrew  their  master  they  were  sent  to 
New  or  Old  England  to  complete  their  studies. 

There  was  no  town  life  in  Virginia,  and  its  ab 
sence  was  felt  to  be  a  serious  menace  to  the  pros 
perity  and  future  growth  of  the  colony,  and  its 
rulers  attempted  to  correct  this  weakness.  With  the 
exception  of  Williamsburg,  the  seat  of  government, 
there  was  even  as  late  as  the  beginning  of  the 
eighteenth  century  "hardly  so  much  as  a  village 
in  Virginia."  By  the  middle  of  the  century  Wil 
liamsburg  could  boast  only  two  hundred  wooden 
houses,  and  its  streets  were  unpaved.  Richmond, 
founded  in  1737,  had  a  population  of  less  than  four 
thousand  in  1790.  Norfolk,  a  port  of  very  con 
siderable  pretensions,  which  did  a  large  trade  with 
the  other  southern  colonies  and  the  West  Indies, 
had  in  1776  only  six  thousand  inhabitants,  while 
Philadelphia  numbered  thirty-five  thousand  and 
New  York  twenty-five  thousand,  though  the  popu- 


254          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

lation  of  the  two  Northern  states  did  not  equal  that  of 
Virginia.  To  create  towns,  various  expedients  were 
resorted  to.  By  statute,  tobacco  grown  in  certain 
counties  had  to  be  sent  to  Jamestown  to  be  stored 
there  for  shipment.  But  the  planter  refused  to  add 
to  the  cost  of  his  crop  by  submitting  to  arbitrary 
and  hampering  ordinances.  Every  planter  had  his 
wharf,  which  was  to  him  what  the  siding  is  to  the 
great  manufacturer  to-day.  It  was  foolish  to  break 
bulk  when  a  vessel  could  be  loaded  at  his  door  and 
sent  direct  to  its  destination.  "When  Thomas 
Jefferson  entered  William  and  Mary  College  in 
1670,  a  lad  of  seventeen  years,  he  had  never  seen 
so  many  as  a  dozen  houses  grouped  together." 

Despite  their  extensive  coast  line,  the  Virginians 
were  not  a  sea-faring  people  and  had  no  love  for  the 
sea,  like  the  men  of  the  North  or  the  Carolinas  to 
the  south  of  them.  They  owned  no  shipping  except 
small  coasting  vessels.  Although  engaged  in  trade, 
they  were  not  merchants  and  had  no  genius  for 
manufacturing.  Everything  they  needed  they  im 
ported,  nearly  every  man  for  himself,  and  paid  for 
it  in  the  great  staple  of  the  colony,  tobacco. 

The  Tobacco  Aristocracy  of  Virginia,  which 
flourished  for  two  centuries,  roughly  from  the 
middle  of  the  seventeeth  century  until  it  fell  under 
the  shock  of  battle  at  about  the  same  period  of 
the  nineteenth,  was  one  of  the  most  remarkable 
phases  of  social  development  the  world  has  known. 
Perhaps  its  nearest  parallel  was  Rome  when  the 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      255 

patricians  were  in  their  glory,  whose  wealth  was 
in  land,  and  who,  surrounded  by  their  slaves  and 
dependents,  lived,  for  their  age,  much  the  same  life 
that  these  Virginians  did.  In  the  society  of  Rome  of 
that  day,  as  in  the  social  system  of  Virginia  of  the 
era  of  which  we  are  treating,  pride  of  class  was  its 
distinguishing  feature,  and  this  sharp  distinction 
in  social  conditions  was  emphasized  by  the  institu 
tion  of  slavery,  which  discredited  manual  labor  and 
destroyed  industry.  "For  in  a  warm  climate  no 
man  will  labor  for  himself  who  can  make  another 
labor  for  him.  This  is  so  true  that  of  the  proprietors 
of  slaves  a  very  small  proportion,  indeed,  are  ever 
seen  to  labor."  1 

The  chasm  between  master  and  servants  was  so 
deep  that  it  was  impossible  almost  for  the  latter  to 
hope  to  rise  into  the  class  above  him.  Black  slavery, 
in  that  period  of  the  world's  history  when  the 
dominance  of  centuries  had  made  the  white  race 
regard  itself  as  superior  to  all  others,  was  more 
destructive,  morally  and  economically,  than  any 
other  form  of  slavery  that  has  ever  existed  since 
the  strong  enslaved  the  weak.  In  the  time  of 
Greece  and  Rome,  after  that  in  those  long  years 
when  slavery  was  accepted  as  a  matter  of  course, 
there  was  always  a  possibility  that  the  slave,  by 
extraordinary  ability  or  unusual  circumstance, 
might  rise,  and  with  his  freedom  find  his  place 
among  men.  There  was  no  such  hope  for  the  son  of 

1  Jefferson:  Notes  on  Virginia,  p.  241. 


256          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

a  black  mother.  The  taint  of  color  set  him  outside 
the  pale,  it  was  always  a  stigma  and  condemned 
him  to  a  life  of  servility.  For  him  Pandora's  box 
was  sealed. 

The  history  of  civilization  is  the  history  of  slavery 
and  its  final  overthrow,  and  it  was  overthrown  not 
alone  because  it  was  repugnant  to  the  moral  sense 
of  an  enlightened  civilization  —  for  morals  are 
merely  convention  and  change  with  the  varying 
needs  of  society  —  but  because  it  was  an  economic 
untruth  and  cost  more  than  it  produced.  Its 
destruction  in  the  United  States,  after  having 
existed  for  more  than  two  hundred  years,  was  pre 
cipitated  by  causes  that  at  the  time  seemed  to  be 
far  removed  from  economic  and  were  purely  moral 
and  political,  and  yet  we  shall  see  later  how  much 
economic  causes  had  to  do  with  ending  slavery. 
It  was  bound  to  come.  The  war  accelerated  it  and 
hastened  the  march  of  events,  but  slavery  could 
not  have  endured  because  it  was  an  economic 
fallacy. 

We  have  accepted  the  doctrine  of  the  survival  of 
the  fittest,  but  in  accepting  the  result  we  too  often 
overlook  the  intermediary  stages  and  their  conse 
quences.  It  is  true  that  the  fit  alone  survive,  that 
the  plant  or  bird  or  animal  or  race  that  can  adapt 
itself  to  circumstances  and  the  conditions  of  its 
environment  can  alone  live  and  propagate  its 
species,  but  that  is  a  long  process  of  slow  and 
gradual  transformation  in  structure  and  function, 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      257 

in  the  case  of  the  plant  or  the  animal ;  in  structure 
and  mental  equipment  in  the  case  of  man.  Before 
that  end  is  reached  the  unfit  have  left  their  impress 
upon  their  race  and  surroundings,  they  have  trans 
mitted  their  characteristics  to  their  descendants, 
they  have  affected  the  civilization  of  their  time,  they 
have  planted  evils  which  can  only  be  extirpated  by 
that  gradual  progress  by  which  the  unfit,  marked 
for  extinction,  are  merged  in  the  fit,*  who  are  fore 
ordained  to  live.  A  race  dies  because  it  cannot 
reproduce  itself,  because  it  propagates  the  seed  of 
its  own  destruction,  but  there  is  no  catastrophic 
climax.  There  is  no  period  on  which  we  can  put 
our  finger  and  say,  "here  the  unfit  ceased  to  exist 
and  the  fit  came  on  the  scene."  Side  by  side  the 
fit  and  the  unfit  lived,  the  unfit  exercising  their 
destructive  influence  until  the  time  when  evolution 
had  accomplished  its  predestined  task. 

The  men  who  survived  and  made  Virginia  were 
a  virile  and  intellectually  powerful  race,  but  the 
men  who  disappeared  during  the  course  of  the 
struggle  influenced  many  generations,  and  that 
"  white  trash"  of  the  South  to  which  I  have  already 
referred,  those  idle,  dissolute,  shiftless  creatures 
who  looked  with  contempt  on  the  negro  and  for 
whom  the  negro  had  even  greater  contempt,  no 
less  powerfully  affected  Southern  civilization,  and 
through  it  the  entire  country,  than  the  men  who 
were  in  every  sense  leaders  and  raised  up  to  estab 
lish  a  nation.  Extraordinary  as  this  assertion  may 


258          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

appear,  we  shall  see  later  that  it  is  sustained  by  the 
facts. 

It  was  a  very  remarkable  civilization  that  was 
built  on  tobacco.  It  produced  great  wealth,  it  gave 
birth  to  great  intelligence  and  independence;  it  was 
the  acid  to  correct  the  alkali  of  New  England.  To 
Virginia  the  American  people  owe  as  much  as  to 
Massachusetts,  but  their  sense  of  obligation  must 
take  another  form.  It  was  the  difference  between 
Cromwell  and  Marlborough,  and  it  would  be 
another  English  history  if  neither,  or  perhaps  only 
one,  had  lived.  It  was  a  civilization  reared  not  on  a 
necessity,  not  on  something  without  which  the  world 
could  not  live,  but  on  a  luxury.  That  in  itself  is 
remarkable.  It  could  exist  only  so  long  as  it  was 
fed  by  the  lifeblood  of  negro  slavery,  which  in  the 
eyes  of  the  world  was  a  crime  long  before  the  world 
was  no  longer  content  to  close  its  eyes  and  dull  its 
ears  to  that  which  offended  its  finer  impulses.  And 
finally,  this  pure  luxury  was  the  most  wasteful  of 
all  crops.  From  the  earth  it  took  everything,  but  it 
gave  nothing.  It  was  the  agricultural  Minotaur 
that  devastated  a  virgin  soil. 

Yet  with  all  this  Virginia  grew  and  prospered 
and  raised  a  great  race  of  great  men,  who  like 
other  races  of  great  men  were  devoid  of  the 
commercial  sense  and  with  the  indifference  of  the 
spendthrift  lived  on  capital.  With  the  exhaustion 
of  the  soil,  with  the  competition  of  other  countries 
that  practiced  a  more  scientific  culture  of  tobacco, 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      259 

the  Virginians  found  themselves  at  the  end  of  their 
resources,  for  their  principal  was  gone  and  there 
were  no  means  to  replace  it.  But  while  it  lasted, 
while  money  was  made  quickly  and  those  virgin 
lands  yielded  their  fullness,  it  was  a  day  of  great 
plenty  and  a  free,  generous  life  that  developed  the 
minds  and  bodies  of  men  and  dwarfed  them 
spiritually.  It  left  a  legacy  that  future  generations 
have  still  to  pay. 

Here  is  a  picture  of  the  Golden  Era  of  the  planta 
tion  age  by  a  writer  whose  sympathies  are  frankly 
Southern.  It  is  not  historically  accurate,  and  the 
author's  sense  of  proportion  is  distorted,  but  it 
conveys  a  fair  impression  of  the  plantation  life 
when  Virginia  enjoyed  a  monopoly  of  tobacco :  — 

"  There  was  a  blacksmith  shop,  woodburners  to 
keep  the  house  supplied  with  charcoal,  brick- 
makers,  masons,  carpenters,  a  mill  which  ground 
flour  for  sale  as  well  as  for  the  family's  use,  coopers 
to  make  barrels  for  it,  and  a  schooner  to  carry  all 
products  to  market.  Besides  these  there  were  a 
shoemaker,  and  weavers  who  in  the  year  1758  pro 
duced  eight  hundred  and  fifteen  yards  of  linen, 
three  hundred  and  sixty  five  yards  of  woolen,  one 
hundred  and  forty  yards  of  linsey,  and  forty  yards 
of  cotton  goods.  There  was  an  important  fishery  on 
the  shore,  and  large  herds  of  cattle,  horses,  and 
sheep,  not  to  mention  the  great  waving  fields  of 
grain,  for  Washington  planted  little  or  no  tobacco. 

"It  was  a  large  enterprise,  somewhat  resembling, 


260          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

in  the  ability  required,  our  modern  manufacturing 
industries,  but  more  varied.  In  fact,  in  colonial 
times  the  Southern  plantations  were  the  great  busi 
ness  undertakings  of  the  country,  and  more  broad 
ening  in  their  effect  on  character  than  the  petty 
trades  and  small  farming  that  were  followed  in  the 
North. 

"The  man  who  successfully  ruled  this  property 
and  its  retainers  and  at  the  same  time  led  the  life  of 
a  sportsman  and  a  gentleman,  mingled  with  military 
service  on  the  frontier  in  the  French  and  Indian 
wars,  was  receiving  an  education  which  cannot  be 
given  in  modern  times  by  any  university,  city,  or 
community  in  the  United  States.  No  amount  of 
book  learning,  no  college  curriculum  imitated  from 
plodding,  mystical  Germans,  no  cramming  or 
examinations,  and  no  system  of  gymnastic  exercises 
can  be  even  a  substitute  for  that  Virginian  life 
which  inspired  with  vigor,  freshness,  and  creative 
power  the  great  men  who  formed  the  Union  and 
the  Constitution." * 

Another  American  writer  gives  us  a  somewhat 
different  picture  of  the  Tobacco  Aristocracy.  The 
isolation  of  these  semi-feudal  plantations  created 
"two  great  classes,  a  class  of  vast  landowners, 
haughty,  hospitable,  indolent,  passionate,  given  to 
field  sports  and  politics,  and  a  class  of  impover 
ished  white  plebeians  and  black  serfs."  As  was 
inevitable  in  a  dominion  where  lands  and  laborers 

1  Fisher:  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times,  vol.  i,  pp.  83-85. 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      261 

were  the  chief  constituents  of  wealth,  where  slaves, 
black  and  white,  were  counted  by  the  thousand, 
and  into  which  the  Cavaliers  had  brought  the 
English  system  of  primogeniture  and  entail,  a 
favored  class  held  all  military,  judicial,  legislative, 
and  executive  power.  This  aristocracy  had  not 
hitherto  acted  as  a  political  party,  but  the  English 
restoration  was  a  Virginian  revolution.  It  took  the 
power  from  the  people,  who  did  not  regain  it  for 
more  than  half  a  century.1 

But  this  takes  us  somewhat  ahead  of  the  time 
with  which  we  are  dealing.  Before  the  Golden  Age 
the  colony  had  to  pass  through  the  usual  vicissi 
tudes  of  political  turmoil  and  become  schooled  in 
that  political  training  which  made  it  possible  for  the 
new  American  political  philosophy  to  be  accepted. 

Had  England  deliberately  set  to  work  to  train 
up  these  expatriated  sons  of  hers  so  as  to  make 
them  rebel  against  the  home  government  and  its 
attempts  to  keep  them  in  perpetual  tutelage,  she 
could  not  have  gone  about  it  with  greater  skill  or 
adopted  methods  more  certain  to  be  successful. 
It  was  a  day  when  the  people  were  more  fully  con 
scious  than  ever  before  of  the  immense  power  that 
resided  in  them.  The  seed  of  democracy  had  been 
planted,  although  it  must  take  another  century  and 
more  before  its  fruits  were  visible,  but  in  the  mean 
time  the  souls  and  minds  of  men  were  stirred  in  a 
way  new  to  them  and  vague  longings  possessed 

1  Aveiy:  A  History  of  the  United  States,  vol.  ii,  p.  187. 


262          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

them.  When  in  1619  the  first  House  of  Burgesses 
was  created  in  Virginia,  an  eminent  historian 
quaintly  speaks  of  it  as  having  "broken  out,"  and 
a  later  and  equally  eminent  historian  comments  on 
this  expression,  "as  if  there  were  an  incurable  virus 
of  liberty  in  the  English  blood,  as  it  were  some 
thing  that  must  come  out  as  inevitably  as  original 
sin."  1  It  was  that  "incurable  virus"  that,  like  the 
sap  in  the  tree  rising  in  springtime,  was  now  infus 
ing  the  blood  of  Englishmen. 

The  struggle  between  King  and  Parliament  was 
an  effort  on  the  part  of  Charles  arbitrarily  to  con 
trol  the  purse.  His  successor,  James  II,  no  less 
arbitrary  and  with  an  even  greater  dislike  of  the 
interference  of  Parliament,  still  had  wisdom  enough 
to  reaffirm  the  principle  that  Cromwell's  commis 
sioners  had  recognized  and  George  III  was  to 
ignore,  that  taxation  implied  representation.  Thus 
twice  in  a  little  more  than  three  decades  had  these 
Englishmen  in  Virginia  won  without  bloodshed  and 
almost  without  effort  what  at  home  had  been 
gained  only  at  the  point  of  the  sword.  When  Lord 
Howard  of  Effingham  was  sent  to  Virginia  as  Gov 
ernor  his  instructions  from  the  King  authorized  him 
that  in  all  matters  relating  to  taxation  he  was  to 
"recommend"  measures  to  the  Assembly.  It  was 
the  recognition  that  the  sole  power  to  impose  taxes 
was  inherent  in  the  Assembly  as  the  representatives 
of  the  people. 

1  Fiske:  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbours,  vol.  i,  p.  240. 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      263 

But  before  that  Cromwell  had  acknowledged  the 
right  of  the  Virginians  to  tax  themselves.  Following 
the  execution  of  Charles  the  Assembly  passed  an 
act  declaring  that  commissions  of  the  Crown  were 
still  valid  and  refused  to  recognize  the  authority  of 
the  Commonwealth.  Two  ships  were  sent  from 
England  to  bring  the  rebellious  colonials  to  terms, 
who  yielded  without  striking  a  blow.  The  incident 
is  not  important  except  for  the  recognition  by  the 
Parliamentary  Commissioners  "that  Virginia  shall 
be  free  from  all  taxes,  customes  and  impositions 
whatsoever,  and  none  to  be  imposed  on  them  with 
out  the  consent  of  the  Grand  Assembly,  And  soe 
that  neither  ffortes  nor  castles  bee  erected  or  garri 
soned  without  their  consent."  1  In  many  ways  the 
Virginians  had  been  taught  the  wisdom  of  loudly 
demanding  what  they  wanted,  and  in  case  of 
refusal  to  offer  a  bold  front;  and  they  knew  very 
well  that  so  long  as  they  controlled  their  own  taxa 
tion  they  had  little  to  fear  from  royal  governors. 

The  life  led  by  the  Virginians  made  them  tre 
mendously  self  reliant  and  showed  them  what  an 
artificial  creation  society  is.  In  their  own  England 
customs  had  become  stereotyped,  there  was  ma 
chinery  of  government  and  law  of  whose  work 
ings  they  knew  little,  but  which  they  accepted  as  a 
matter  of  course;  it  had  become  as  mechanical  and 
as  much  a  matter  of  routine  as  the  rising  of  the  sun 
or  the  succession  of  days  through  the  calendar  of 

1  Hening's  Statutes,  vol.  i,  p.  364. 


264          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

the  month.  In  Virginia  society  was  stripped  of  its 
coverings.  What  had  before  seemed  mysterious, 
nebulous,  too  complicated  to  be  grasped  by  little 
minds,  was  found  to  be  on  near  approach  extraor 
dinarily  simple  and  easily  comprehended.  There 
was  no  remote  system  of  poor  law  rising  in  some 
distant  fountain  head  and  filtering  its  way  to  the 
object  of  its  relief.  If  one  man  starved,  all  starved. 
There  were,  at  first,  no  judges  and  courts  and  terrify 
ing  machinery  of  justice,  that  was  the  more  terrifying 
because  it  was  so  impersonal.  Justice  was  quick 
and  direct.  There  were  no  involved  processes  of 
trade  by  which  a  dozen  barriers  must  be  broken 
down  before  consumer  and  producer  are  brought 
together.  Commerce  was  direct  barter.  All  the 
dead  fustian  with  which  civilization  delights  to 
clothe  itself,  and  which  is  inseparable  from  civiliza 
tion,  was  swept  away  and  men  stood  face  to  face. 
Had  these  Englishmen  not  been  the  product  of  a 
civilization  highly  developed,  they  would  have  acted 
from  instinct  and  in  their  ignorance  believed  that 
their  own  was  the  only  practical  way.  But  they 
had  the  advantage  of  comparison,  and  were  able 
to  see  that  to  lay  the  foundation  for  their  own 
social  order  was  a  task  not  so  difficult. 

They  were,  however,  left  largely  to  shift  for  them 
selves.  It  is  true  they  were  given  assistance  from 
England  and  except  for  that  help  they  would  have 
perished  in  the  early  days,  but  it  was  chiefly  on 
their  own  reliance  they  depended.  When  they  real- 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      265 

ized  how  well  they  were  able  to  take  care  of  them 
selves,  they  quickly  resented  the  efforts  of  the  home 
government  to  treat  them  politically  as  children 
and  constantly  to  remind  them  of  their  dependence. 
They  were  feeling  their  own  strength  and  were 
conscious  of  what  they  had  done. 

Everything  tended  to  stimulate  resistance.  The 
mental  attitude  of  the  Englishman  of  the  seventeenth 
and  eighteenth  centuries,  in  one  respect  at  least,  was 
not  unlike  that  of  the  Englishman  of  the  nineteenth 
century  in  his  insular  contempt  for  foreigners  and 
the  tactlessness  he  displayed  in  dealing  with  his 
children  who  had  become  colonists.  He  seems  to 
have  forgotten  that  the  men  who  were  building  a 
new  empire  across  the  Atlantic  were  men  of  his  own 
blood,  often  men  of  his  own  family;  and  "  colonist " 
was  almost  a  term  of  reproach,  if  not  of  disdain. 
It  was  characteristic  of  this  attitude  that  when  Dr. 
Blair  went  to  England  to  try  to  obtain  money  to 
establish  a  college  in  Virginia  and  approached  Sir 
Edward  Seymour  for  a  grant  from  the  treasury,  he 
met  with  a  curt  refusal.  "You  must  not  forget," 
Blair  mildly  told  him,  "  that  people  in  Virginia  have 
souls  to  save  as  well  as  people  in  England." 
"Souls,"  Seymour  echoed  in  derision,  "damn  your 
souls!  Grow  tobacco!"  And  the  character  of  the 
governors  that  administered  the  colony  was  a  direct 
invitation  to  defy  authority.  Many  of  them  were 
men  of  ability  who  had  the  interests  of  the  colony 
at  heart,  but  more  of  them  were  men  of  little  capa- 


266          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

city,  court  favorites  who  were  pitchforked  into  office 
as  an  easy  means  of  finding  them  a  profitable  job, 
and  to  whom  Virginia  meant  nothing  except  a  place 
of  exile  and  the  means  of  replenishing  a  depleted 
purse.  A  little  more  tact  in  dealing  with  a  proud 
and  self-reliant  people,  a  little  more  sympathy  with 
their  aims  and  aspirations,  a  little  better  under 
standing  of  their  character,  and  the  friction  of  the 
first  hundred  and  fifty  years  would  have  been 
avoided  and  the  great  drama  of  1776  need  not 
have  been  staged.  They  were  a  people  easily  led 
but  difficult  to  drive.  And  few  Englishmen,  from 
Argall  to  George  III,  ever  understood  that  simple 
truth. 

In  Virginia  as  in  Massachusetts,  from  the  time 
when  the  colonists  first  obtained  a  measure  of  self- 
government  until  they  threw  off  their  allegiance  to 
the  mother  country,  there  was  constant  agitation  to 
check  the  encroachment  of  the  governors,  which 
sometimes  existed  only  in  the  imagination  of  the 
colonists;  and  to  increase  the  measure  of  popular 
liberty,  or  to  oppose  legislation  that  was  enacted 
solely  in  the  interest  of  British  merchants  and 
destroyed  or  hampered  colonial  commerce  and 
enterprise.  Usually  this  discontent  voiced  itself 
in  discussion  and  protest,  to  which  we  may  trace 
the  extraordinary  power  of  political  oratory  which 
distinguishes  the  American,  and  it  was  an  excellent 
school  of  political  training;  but  from  time  to  time 
there  was  open  and  armed  resistance  to  royal 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      267 

authority,  which  should  have  been  a  warning  to 
men  less  blinded  by  their  own  conceit.  Every 
American  schoolboy  is  familiar  with  Nathaniel 
Bacon's  attempt  to  overthrow  Sir  William  Berke 
ley's  rule  and  his  indictment  of  that  stout  old 
Cavalier,  which  foreshadowed  by  a  hundred  years 
the  indictment  of  George  III,  there  being  in  both 
instruments  a  curious  similarity  of  language  and 
thought,  which  proves  conclusively,  I  think,  that 
long  before  the  American  nation  was  born  the  seed 
had  been  sown  in  the  spirit  of  resistance  and  oppo 
sition  and  a  determination  to  submit  to  no  form  of 
government  that  did  not  first  consider  the  rights 
and  welfare  of  the  people.1  But  Virginia  was  not 
alone  in  having  to  put  down  rebellion  in  the  early 
history  of  the  colonies.  In  Maryland,  in  Massachu 
setts,  in  New  York,  there  was  resistance  to  authority ; 

1  Bacon's  Indictment  of  Sir  William  Berkeley,  the  original  of  which  is  in 
the  British  State  Paper  Office,  contains  many  counts,  of  which  the  following 
are  the  most  important  and  characteristic:  — 

"For  having  upon  specious  pretence  of  public  works  raised  unjust  taxes 
upon  the  commonalty  for  the  advancement  of  private  favourites  and  other 
sinister  ends,  but  no  visible  effects  in  any  measure  adequate. 

"  For  not  having,  during  the  long  time  of  his  government,  in  any  measure 
advanced  this  hopeful  colony  either  by  fortifications,  towns,  or  trade. 

"  For  having  abused  and  rendered  contemptible  the  majesty  of  justice,  of 
advancing  to  places  of  judicature  scandalous  and  ignorant  favourites. 

"For  having  wronged  his  Majesty's  prerogative  and  interest  by  assuming 
the  monopoly  of  the  beaver  trade. 

"For  having  in  that  unjust  gain  bartered  and  sold  his  Majesty's  country 
and  the  lives  of  his  loyal  subjects  to  the  barbarous  heathen. 

"For  having  protected,  favoured,  and  emboldened  the  Indians  against  his 
Majesty's  most  loyal  subjects,  never  contriving,  requiring  or  appointing  any 
due  or  proper  means  of  satisfaction  for  their  many  invasions,  murders,  and 
robberies  committed  upon  us." 


268          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

there  was  always  the  latent  spirit  of  rebellion  swift 
to  flame  into  open  defiance. 

A  strong  race,  similar  to  a  man  of  strong  char 
acter,  is  never  content,  but  always  finds  present 
conditions  capable  of  improvement  and  endeavors 
to  better  them.  A  race  that  is  satisfied  is  like  the 
man  whose  ambition  is  gratified,  and  then  quickly 
follow  stagnation  and  decay.  It  is  this  wholesome 
discontent,  this  unrest,  this  longing  for  something 
finer,  this  ever  striving  for  excellence,  this  criticism, 
that  make  the  man  stronger  and  better  and  the  race 
more  resolute  and  capable  of  accomplishing  great 
things.  That  these  Englishmen  were  to  found  a 
great  and  vigorous  race  was  indicated  by  their 
never  being  quite  satisfied,  even  when  life  ran 
easily  and  smoothly  for  them,  and  they  never  sank 
into  that  destructive  state  of  smug  complacency 
which  is  the  beginning  of  the  end  of  all  progress; 
the  corollary  of  a  fatuous  optimism  that  accepts 
whatever  is  as  the  best  of  all  possible  things  in 
the  best  of  all  possible  worlds.  Their  descend 
ants,  strong  men  sprung  from  a  strong  stock,  have 
the  same  spirit.  The  American  of  to-day  is  properly 
dissatisfied,  always  wan  ting  some  thing  better,  always 
trying  to  reform,  ever  seeking  to  improve  himself 
and  his  conditions,  which  is  the  long  struggle  that 
leads  to  perfection. 

Tolerance,  a  courteous  yielding  of  individual 
opinion  to  that  of  an  adversary  and  a  recognition 
that  although  men  may  differ  there  is  some  merit 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY 

in  the  argument  of  an  opponent,  was  not  a  virtue 
of  the  seventeenth  century;  but  religious  intoler 
ance  has  always  been  much  harsher  than  political, 
unless  the  latter,  under  the  guise  of  a  civil  polity, 
involved  the  supremacy  of  the  Church.  Virginia 
was  not  free  from  the  prevailing  harshness  of  the 
age,  but  it  was  a  more  tolerant  community  than 
Massachusetts,  and  by  contrast  it  seemed  to  be 
more  liberal,  as  if  its  morals  were  looser  and  the 
state  of  society  generally  more  lax.  And  yet  in 
that  early  day,  about  the  time  that  Puritanism  was 
seeking  a  foothold  in  Massachusetts,  Virginia  en 
acted  a  code  of  blue  laws  that  should  have  com 
pelled  the  admiration  of  the  most  rigid  Puritan. 
Drunkenness  was  a  crime  to  be  severely  punished. 
Men  must  dress  according  to  their  station  in  life, 
and  every  married  man  had  a  direct  interest  in  pre 
venting  the  undue  extravagance  of  his  wife,  as  they 
were  assessed  "according  to  his  own  and  his  wife's 
apparel."  Maidens  who  flirted  and  men  who  en 
gaged  themselves  to  more  than  one  woman  at  the 
same  time  were  liable  to  be  whipped  or  fined.  The 
crime  of  bringing  the  governor  into  contempt  or 
ridicule  was  punished  by  the  pillory,  and  to  dis 
parage  a  minister  was  to  risk  the  censure  of  the 
governor  and  council.  "Profane  swearing"  could 
be  indulged  in  only  at  the  risk  of  a  shilling  an  oath. 
To  make  a  journey  upon  the  Sabbath,  "except  in 
case  of  emergent  necessitie, "  was  punishable  by  a 
fine  of  one  hundred  pounds  of  tobacco.  The  code 


270          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

sanctioned  by  the  London  Company  was  Draconian 
in  its  severity.  Blasphemy,  denying  "the  known 
articles  of  the  Christian  faith,"  speaking  against 
the  King,  or  vilifying  the  London  Company,  were 
crimes  punishable  with  death. 

But  these  laws  were  not  considered  unduly  harsh 
for  their  day,  and  they  did  not  sorely  oppress  the 
colonists.  Men  were  whipped  and  fined  and  pillo 
ried  and  a  few  were  hanged,  but  Virginia  had 
slight  cause  to  complain  of  tyrants  who  punished 
for  the  mere  delight  of  inflicting  suffering  and  grati 
fying  a  love  for  cruelty.  It  was  this  moderation  that 
left  Virginia  almost  indifferent  to  the  great  struggle 
in  England  and  made  no  unclosable  breach  between 
the  Virginians  and  the  New  Englanders.  In  Vir 
ginia  there  were  no  wrongs  to  be  avenged,  no  bitter 
memories  of  persecution,  no  fortunes  wrecked  or 
estates  confiscated  because  Commonwealth  had 
succeeded  King  and  King  had  replaced  Protector. 
Individual  preference  of  course  the  colonists  had, 
but  they  accepted  the  change  almost  with  uncon 
cern.  It  is  true  that  in  1661  the  Virginia  Assembly 
passed  an  act  making  the  thirteenth  of  January, 
the  anniversary  of  the  execution  of  Charles  I,  a  day 
to  be  solemnized  with  fasting  and  prayer,  "that 
our  sorrows  may  expiate  our  crime,  and  our  tears 
wash  away  our  guilt,"  but  that  was  partly  sentiment 
and  affection  for  the  memory  of  the  "murdered" 
sovereign,  and  partly  expediency.  The  successor  of 
Charles  was  firmly  seated  on  the  throne,  Puritanism 


AN   ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      271 

was  another  lost  cause,  politically  speaking,  and  the 
colonists  knew  the  advantage  of  having  the  favor  of 
the  King  and  the  Court.  But  whether  King  reigned 
or  Protector  governed  was  of  less  consequence  to 
these  fiery  colonists  than  the  enjoyment  of  their 
rights  that  had  so  early  "broken  out"  in  the  history 
of  the  colony.  They  were  quick  enough  to  resist 
encroachment,  they  were  prompt  in  defying  the 
Company  or  the  Court  when  their  liberties  were 
threatened,  but  English  politics  never  raised  up 
among  the  colonists  two  formidable  parties  always 
waiting  to  fly  at  each  other's  throats.  In  England 
the  hope  was  cherished  that  the  King's  party 
would  be  built  up  in  Virginia  and  that  when  the 
time  was  ripe  Virginia  could  be  relied  on  to  con 
tribute  men  and  money  for  the  restoration  of  the 
monarchy.  But  it  was  empty  hope.  There  was 
party  neither  of  the  Crown  nor  of  Parliament,  and 
the  Virginians  cared  more  to  save  the  colony  from 
spoliation  and  bloodshed  than  they  did  to  become 
involved  in  English  politics. 

The  whole  course  of  American  history,  even  in 
the  colonial  era,  when  American  history  was  being 
written,  although  no  one  was  wise  enough  to  read 
it,  shows  that  the  Englishman  in  America  cast  off 
some  of  the  political  traditions  that  had  governed 
him  in  England  and  adopted  new  principles  that 
were  the  necessity  of  his  new  environment  and  his 
new  conditions.  And,  curiously  enough,  broadly 
and  fundamentally,  from  these  principles  there 


272          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

has  been  no  deviation.  The  cardinal  principle  of 
American  polity  from  the  time  of  Washington  to 
the  present  day  has  been  no  "entangling  alliances," 
and  in  keeping  aloof  from  the  struggle  of  Round 
head  and  Cavalier,  and  in  refusing  to  be  made  a 
pawn  in  the  great  game  of  English  politics,  the 
Virginians  unconsciously  adopted  a  policy  that  later 
was  to  have  the  sanction  of  the  American  people 
and  become  incorporated  into  the  unwritten  con 
stitution.  We  shall  see  how  an  unbroken  thread 
runs  through  the  complicated  arabesque  of  Ameri 
can  history,  and  how  it  appears  and  reappears  at 
every  stage  of  American  development  and  with 
what  fidelity  it  has  been  adhered  to. 

After  the  Virginians  brought  the  wilderness  under 
subjection  and  the  peril  of  Indian  massacre  was  no 
longer  to  be  feared,  it  was  natural  that  they  should 
settle  down  to  the  enjoyment  of  the  good  fortune 
that  was  theirs.  In  all  the  accounts  of  contemporary 
Virginia  we  are  impressed  by  the  spirit  of  content, 
by  the  emphasis  laid  on  pleasant  surroundings 
and  the  life  of  ease  and  pleasure,  which  is  in  such 
marked  contrast  to  life  in  the  northern  colonies, 
where  hearts  were  still  being  searched  in  the  vain 
endeavor  to  solve  the  unfathomable  mystery  of  sin 
and  suffering.  The  Virginian  was  no  metaphysician 
or  hair-splitting  theologian ;  polemical  discussion  did 
not  appeal  to  him;  whether  a  soul  could  dance  on 
the  point  of  a  needle  was  a  foolish  speculation  when 
the  hounds  were  straining  to  raise  the  fox,  and  the 


AN  ARISTOCRATIC   OLIGARCHY      273 

skies  were  blue  and  cloudless,  and  the  air  was  balmy 
and  perfume  laden,  and  after  the  chase  there  was 
tobacco  and  toddy  to  bring  enjoyment  and  defy 
sour-faced  preachers. 

This  contentment  resulted  in  another  significant 
mental  change.  From  mere  adventurers  and  trans 
ients  the  Virginian  had  been  transformed  into  a 
people  with  a  country.  The  spirit  of  patriotism, 
which  makes  nations,  was  springing  into  life.  The 
discovery  that  Virginia  was  not  a  land  of  fabled 
wealth  and  mythological  miracle,  that  the  ground 
was  not  encumbered  with  gold  and  rivers  did  not 
run  contrary  to  the  laws  of  Nature,  was  a  great  blow 
to  the  first  settlers,  who  in  many  things  were  as 
simple  as  children  and  as  easily  imposed  upon  by 
fairy  tales.  But  back  of  their  ingenuousness  was 
the  substratum  of  English  solidity  and  obstinacy. 
The  gold  existed  only  in  imagination,  but  the  wealth 
was  there  to  be  won  by  effort.  Virginia  was  no 
longer  a  place  of  exile,  but  a  country  in  which  men 
were  to  live  and  prosper;  a  country  not  only  to  be 
endured  but  to  be  liked,  for  the  Virginians  soon  came 
to  have  an  affection  for  this  wondrous  land  that  was 
so  rich  and  rewarded  them  so  lavishly.  They  were 
not  only  content  to  remain,  but  few  had  any  desire 
to  leave.1  "  The  romantic  era  of  colonization,  with 
its  wild  hopes  and  ambitions,  is  over."  It  was  no 
longer  necessary  to  hold  out  alluring  but  impossible 

1  "Leah  and  Rachel;  or  The  Two  Fruitful  Sisters,  Virginia  and  Mary 
land,"  Force,  vol.  iii,  p.  12. 


274          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

promises.  God  need  not  be  propitiated  by  the 
sanctimonious  lie  of  the  conversion  of  the  heathen, 
nor  greed  excited  by  illusory  tales  of  gold.  Even 
the  importance  of  Virginia  to  England  as  a  com 
mercial  and  military  outpost  was  less  dwelt  upon. 
Virginia  was  appreciated  for  herself,  and  the  once 
stony-hearted  stepmother  had  become  a  sweetheart 
to  be  wooed  and  a  wife  to  be  cherished. 

And  climate  worked  its  end.  "The  cloudless 
skies  and  genial  air  had  changed  the  heavy,  sombre 
Englishman  into  the  spirited,  keen,  vivacious  beings 
who  produced  the  Jeffersons,  Madisons,  Randolphs 
and  Lees."  They  were  a  united  people,  those 
Virginians,  and  believed  in  themselves.  Perhaps 
this  —  this  intense  confidence  in  themselves  —  was 
the  great  reason  why  they  achieved  and  became 
great. 


CHAPTER  XVI 

THE   FIRST   CATHOLIC   COLONY 

IT  has  been  well  said  by  Bancroft  that  "the 
United  States  were  severally  colonized  by  men,  in 
origin,  religious  faith,  and  purposes,  as  varied  as 
their  climes  " ;  and  by  another  American  writer  that 
"in  travelling  from  Massachusetts  to  the  Carolinas 
one  passed  through  communities  of  such  distinct 
individuality  that  they  were  almost  like  different 
nations.  Each  had  been  founded  for  a  reason  and 
purpose  of  its  own,  each  had  a  set  of  opinions  and 
laws  peculiar  to  itself,  and  it  was  not  uncommon 
to  find  the  laws  and  opinions  of  one  a  contra 
diction  to  those  of  another";  and  we  have  only  to 
turn  to  the  early  history  of  Maryland  to  recognize 
the  truth  of  these  observations.  Thrust  like  a  wedge 
between  the  older  colony  of  Virginia  and  the 
younger  of  Massachusetts  Bay,  the  one  in  every 
thing  so  unlike  the  other,  Maryland,  in  that  early 
day,  was  the  connecting  link  between  North  and 
South;  southern,  because  of  its  geographical  posi 
tion  and  climate  and  soil ;  northern,  because  by  one 
of  those  whims  of  fate  it  practiced  tolerance  and 
gave  asylum  to  the  intolerance  of  Puritanism  and 
the  narrowness  no  less  of  those  Virginia  "butter 
flies"  who,  lightly  as  they  regarded  theological  dis- 


276          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

pute,   had   all   the   stubbornness   of  ignorance   in 
defending  the  faith. 

Maryland  interests  us  as  being  the  first  and  only 
American  colony  established  to  afford  a  refuge 
to  Roman  Catholics.  To  escape  persecution,  to  be 
permitted  to  lead  their  lives  in  their  own  way  un 
hindered  by  civil  or  ecclesiastical  law,  the  Puritans 
went  to  Massachusetts.  It  was  with  the  same  pur 
pose  that  George  Calvert,  the  first  Lord  Baltimore, 
led  his  company  of  adventurers  first  to  Newfound 
land  and  then  to  Virginia,  which  would  have  none  of 
him  because  of  his  religion ;  and  later  found  shelter 
in  Maryland.  We  are  interested  in  Maryland, 
in  tracing  American  development,  because  of  the 
influence  exercised  on  the  American  character  by 
the  religious  faith  of  its  first  settlers,  which  made 
Maryland  so  different  from  both  Massachusetts  and 
Virginia.  "The  darkened  and  gloomy  mind  of  the 
Puritan"  gave  to  the  American  the  strength  and 
moral  purpose  that  made  Ethan  Allen  demand  the 
surrender  of  Fort  Ticonderoga  "  in  the  name  of  the 
Great  Jehovah  and  the  Continental  Congress";  the 
Virginian  gave  him  imagination  and  the  love  of 
reckless  adventure  that  drove  the  frontier  ever  for 
ward  and  spread  a  handful  of  men  to  fill  a  vast  con 
tinent;  the  Marylander  sowed  the  seeds  of  a  church 
with  its  discipline  and  traditions  that  were  the 
needed  counterpoise.  A  plant  is  nurtured  no  more 
by  its  sun  than  by  its  snow.  Virginia  and  Massa 
chusetts  and  Maryland  —  take  away  any  one  of 


FIRST   CATHOLIC   COLONY        277 

those  elements  and  you  subtract  from  American 
psychology. 

With  the  political  history  of  Maryland  we  need 
not  concern  ourselves,  deeply  interesting  as  it  is  to 
the  historical  student  because  of  the  extraordinary 
powers  it  vested  in  its  proprietor.  Baltimore  died 
a  month  after  he  had  received  his  grant,  and  the 
work  of  colonization  was  carried  on  by  his  son 
Cecilius,  a  remarkable  man  in  an  age  of  remarkable 
men,  to  whom  may  be  accorded  the  honor  of  having 
been  one  of  the  first  English  colonial  administrators 
worthy  of  the  name ;  who  during  the  forty  years  that 
he  governed  the  province  had  its  welfare  always 
at  heart  and  displayed  much  wisdom,  tact  and 
liberality. 

Among  other  things,  Baltimore's  charter  con 
ferred  upon  him  the  patronage  and  advowsons  of 
all  churches,  "  together  with  license  and  faculty  of 
erecting  and  founding  churches,  chapels  and  places 
of  worship,"  and  "of  causing  the  same  to  be  dedi 
cated  and  consecrated  according  to  the  ecclesiastical 
laws  of  our  kingdom  of  England."1  Doyle,  whose 
painstaking  research  and  sound  judgment  have 
made  his  work  so  invaluable  to  students  of  colonial 
history,  finds  in  Baltimore's  acceptance  of  this 
clause  in  the  charter  that  "it  quite  dispels  the  idea 
that  he  intended  his  colony  as  a  special  refuge  for 
his  own  sect,  a  stronghold  for  persecuted  Roman 
ism";  and  other  writers,  American  as  well  as  Eng- 

1  Scharf :  History  of  Maryland,  vol.  i,  p.  54. 


278          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

lish,  have  asserted  that  Baltimore  could  not  estab 
lish  Catholicism  in  his  province  as  he  was  pledged 
to  maintain  the  established  Church  of  England. 
But  it  was  a  casuistical  age,  and  kingly  consciences 
were  not  overburdened  with  scruples  when  favor 
ites  were  to  be  rewarded.  The  first  Lord  Balti 
more  was  well  known  to  be  a  Catholic  and  so  was 
his  son,  and  in  granting  the  charter  to  them  Charles 
had  inserted  no  prohibition  against  freedom  of 
religion.  A  Protestant  king  ruling  a  Protestant 
people  would  find  it  necessary  to  insist  in  the  terms 
of  the  charter  that  Protestantism  should  be  the 
religion  of  the  colony,  but  having  nominated  the 
bond  he  need  not  be  over-particular  as  to  its  obser 
vance.  At  any  rate,  in  November,  1663,  Baltimore 
equipped  two  ships,  the  Ark  and  the  Dove,  for 
Maryland,  which  carried  twenty  gentlemen  adven 
turers  and  some  three  hundred  servants  and  two 
Catholic  priests ;  the  first  time  we  find  mention  made 
of  Catholic  priests  in  an  English  colonizing  expedi 
tion  to  America.  What  proportion  of  Baltimore's 
gentlemen  adventurers  and  servants  were  Protes 
tants  has  never  been  authentically  stated,  but  in  his 
first  advertisement  for  settlers  he  significantly 
announced  that  he  would  accept  people  of  all  relig 
ious  faiths,  and  with  that  wisdom  that  always  dis 
tinguished  him,  forbade  "all  unreasonable  disputes 
on  points  of  religion  tending  to  disturbance  of  the 
public  peace  and  quiet  and  to  the  opening  of  faction 
in  religion."  On  arriving  at  their  destination  one 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        279 

of  the  priests  records  that  "on  the  day  of  the  Annun 
ciation  of  the  most  Holy  Virgin  Mary  in  the  year 
1634  we  celebrated  the  mass  for  the  first  time,  on 
this  island.  This  had  never  been  done  before  in 
this  part  of  the  world.  After  we  had  completed  the 
sacrifice,  we  took  upon  our  shoulders  a  great  cross, 
which  we  had  hewn  out  of  a  tree,  and  advancing  in 
order  to  the  appointed  place,  with  the  assistance  of 
the  Governor  and  his  associates  and  the  other 
Catholics,  we  erected  a  trophy  to  Christ  the  Savior, 
humbly  reciting,  on  our  bended  knees,  the  Litanies 
of  the  Sacred  Cross,  with  great  emotion." 1 

To  speak  of  religious  freedom  in  the  seventeenth 
century  is  to  link  antipodal  forces.  There  was  no 
religious  liberty  in  the  modern  sense.  The  Puritan 
was  no  more  narrow  than  the  Catholic,  and  neither 
was  exceeded  in  liberality  by  the  Episcopalian,  but 
all  were  anxious  to  have  their  own  creed  established 
by  law  and  certified  to  as  the  only  certain  way  by 
which  salvation  could  be  found.  Sons  of  the  Church 
might  occasionally  disgrace  their  mother,  but  the 
worst  churchman,  whether  Puritan,  Episcopalian, 
or  Catholic,  was  better  than  the  best  heretic ;  for  the 
good  heretic  was  a  perversion  of  nature  on  which 
the  Church  had  never  laid  eyes.  "For  howsoever 
bitterly  Catholic  and  Protestant  divines  have  hated 
and  persecuted  each  other,  they  have  united  like 
true  brethren  in  their  hatred  and  their  persecution 
of  heretics;  for  such  was  their  inexorable  destiny." 

1  Scharf :  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  75. 


280  THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

The  religious  liberty  that  distinguished  Baltimore's 
Maryland  palatinate,  which  has  been  belittled  by 
some  American  writers  as  having  existed  in  imagi 
nation  rather  than  in  fact,  was  wide  enough  to  give 
the  colony  a  character  different  from  the  older  ones. 
It  is  probable  that  had  an  avowed  Catholic  king 
sat  on  the  throne  of  England,  and  had  the  majority 
of  Englishmen  been  spiritual  subjects  of  the  Pope, 
Cecil  Calvert  would  have  been  no  more  liberal  in 
his  views  or  religion  than  the  Puritans;  but  cir 
cumstances  compelled  another  course.  Much  as  the 
Catholics  might  have  desired  to  establish  their 
religion  to  the  exclusion  of  all  others,  much  as  they 
may  have  hated  or  sorrowed  over  the  heretic  and 
have  regretted  that  he  was  doomed  to  everlasting 
damnation,  it  was  impossible  to  exclude  Protestant 
ism  from  the  palatinate,  where  it  had  been  enjoined 
by  the  charter.  What  they  could  do  was  to  recog 
nize  liberty  of  worship,  and  they  could  not  sanction 
Catholicism  and  exclude  Puritanism,  which  would 
not  only  have  been  inconsistent  but  inexpedient  and 
impolitic.  Cecil  Calvert  may  not  have  been  in 
advance  of  his  age  and  at  heart  no  more  liberal 
than  Laud,  he  may  have  regretted  that  he  could  not 
complete  his  machinery  of  government  by  the 
establishment  of  the  inquisition  and  the  star 
chamber,  but  the  fact  remains  that  Maryland,  in 
the  seventeenth  century,  was  the  only  place  on  the 
American  continent  under  English  rule  in  which 
religious  sects  were  unmolested. 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        281 

It  is  not  easy  at  the  present  day,  Lea  says,  for 
those  accustomed  to  universal  toleration  to  realize 
the  importance  attached  by  statesmen  in  the  past 
to  unity  of  belief,  or  the  popular  abhorrence  of  any 
deviation  from  the  standard  of  dogma.  These 
convictions  were  part  of  the  mental  and  moral 
fibre  of  the  community  and  were  the  outcome  of 
the  assiduous  teachings  of  the  church  for  centuries, 
until  it  was  classed  with  the  primal  truths  that  it 
was  the  highest  duty  of  the  sovereign  to  crush  out 
dissidence  at  whatever  cost,  and  that  hatred  of  the 
heretic  was  enjoined  on  every  Christian  by  both 
divine  and  human  law.  The  heretic  was  a  venom 
ous  reptile,  spreading  contagion  with  his  breath, 
and  the  safety  of  the  land  required  his  extermina 
tion  as  a  source  of  pestilence.1 

At  a  time  when  Catholics  and  Episcopalians  were 
disfranchised  in  Massachusetts  and  Quakers  were 
scourged  at  the  cart  tail  until  their  bodies  ran  with 
blood,  and  Roger  Williams  was  driven  forth,  and 
John  Cotton  boldly  proclaimed  that  "the  Church 
never  took  hurt  from  the  punishment  of  heretics  "; 
when  Virginia  compelled  nonconformists  to  depart 
the  colony  and  prevented  "popish  recusants"  from 
holding  office,  and  Quakers  were  persecuted  as 
felons,  Maryland  neither  flogged  nor  maimed,  and 
instead  of  driving  out  heretics  opened  her  arms  to 
them. 

In  1649  the  Assembly  passed  "An  Act  concern 
ing  Religion,"  the  first  American  toleration  act 

1  Lea:  History  of  the  Inquisition  of  Spain,  vol.  ii,  p.  1. 


282          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

that  shows  the  liberality  of  the  lord  proprietor 
and  his  legislature.  Any  person  "  who  denominated 
any  other  person  a  heretic,  schismatick,  idolater, 
puritan,  presbyterean,  independent,  popish  priest, 
Jesuit,  jesuited  papist,  lutheran,  calvinist,  anabap 
tist,  brownist,  antinomian,  barrowist,  roundhead, 
separatist,  or  other  name  or  term  in  a  reproachful 
manner,  relating  to  matter  or  religion,"  was  subject 
to  a  fine  of  ten  shillings,  one  half  to  the  lord  pro 
prietor  and  the  other  to  the  person  "of  whom 
such  reproachful  words  are  or  shall  be  uttered 
or  spoken";  and  in  case  of  not  being  able  to 
satisfy  the  fine,  "the  person  so  offending  shall 
be  publicly  whipt  and  shall  suffer  imprisonment 
without  bayle  or  mainprise,  until  he,  she,  or  they 
respectively  shall  satisfy  the  party  offended  or 
grieved  by  such  reproachful  language,  by  asking 
him  or  her  respectively  forgiveness  publicly  for 
such  his  offence  before  the  magistrate  or  chief 
officer  or  officers  of  the  towne  or  place  where 
such  offence  shall  be  given."  A  further  section 
recognized  that  the  "inforcing  of  the  conscience 
in  matters  of  religion  hath  frequently  fallen  out 
to  bee  of  dangerous  consequences  in  those  com 
monwealths,"  therefore,  "for  the  more  quiet  and 
peaceable  government  of  this  province,  and  the 
better  to  preserve  mutual  love  and  unity  amongst 
the  inhabitants  here,"  it  was  provided  that  no 
person  "  professing  to  believe  in  Jesus  Christ  shall 
henceforth  be  any  waies  troubled,  molested,  or 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        283 

discountenanced,  for  or  in  respect  to  his  or  her 
religion,  nor  in  the  exercise  thereof  .  .  .  nor  in 
any  way  compelled  to  the  belief  or  exercise  of 
any  other  religion  against  his  or  her  consent." 

All  through  the  colonial  period  Catholics  were 
looked  upon  with  suspicion,  which  long  afterwards 
colored  the  New  England  view,  but  was  less  notice 
able  in  the  South,  possibly  because  of  the  early 
influence  of  Maryland.  We  have  only  to  examine 
the  various  commissions  and  charters  to  see  that 
Catholics  were  always  discriminated  against.  In 
the  commission  for  New  Hampshire  of  1680  liberty 
of  conscience  was  granted  to  all  Protestants,  but 
not  to  other  sects.  In  the  Massachusetts  charter 
of  1691  William  III  allowed  liberty  of  conscience 
"in  the  worship  of  God  to  all  Christians  (except 
papists)."  Rhode  Island,  defaming  the  memory  of 
Roger  Williams,  enacted  a  statute  depriving  Catho 
lics  of  the  franchise;  Oglethorpe's  charter  for 
Georgia  permitted  "free  exercise  of  religion"  to  all 
persons  "except  papists."  Even  in  Pennsylvania, 
the  most  liberal  of  all  colonies,  the  Catholics  were 
compelled  to  walk  with  great  circumspection  and 
permitted  to  make  little  public  announcement  of 
their  faith.  Penn,  in  1708,  rebukes  his  secretary  of 
the  colony  for  having  suffered  "public  mass  in  a 
scandalous  manner,"  and  the  Philadelphians  op 
posed  the  erection  of  a  Catholic  chapel  because  it 
was  "in  too  public  a  place." 

If  Baltimore  had  done  nothing  else  than  make  it 


284          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

possible  for  Catholics  to  be  placed  on  an  equality 
with  other  Englishmen  and  to  bring  under  the  pro 
tection  of  the  organized  machinery  of  government 
the  Catholic  Church  among  English-speaking  colo 
nists,  he  would  have  won  his  place  in  history.  His 
motives,  I  repeat,  may  have  been  selfish  and  un 
worthy,  he  may  have  been  as  illiberal  as  his  con 
temporaries,  policy  may  have  cloaked  his  hopes, 
and  under  the  guise  of  tolerance  he  may  have 
patiently  waited  for  the  day  when  the  Church  was  to 
become  supreme  and  the  temporal  power  bow  to 
the  spiritual.  With  hidden  motives  we  have  nothing 
to  do.  He  was  as  much  a  pioneer  and  did  as  great 
a  work  in  his  own  way  as  John  Smith  did  in  the 
South  or  Bradford  in  the  North.  I  have  always 
regretted  that  Cecil  Calvert  was  no  diarist  and  had 
none  of  the  love  of  introspection  that  so  marked  the 
Puritans,  who  had  a  perfect  passion  for  self-analysis 
and  the  vivisection  of  their  emotions.  It  would  be 
supremely  interesting  if  we  knew  what  was  in  the 
back  of  this  man's  head,  whether  he  was  simply,  as 
his  life  and  public  acts  would  seem  to  indicate,  a 
person  of  moderation,  shrewdness  and  generous 
instincts,  or  whether  he  was  a  cunning  visionary 
who  toiled  patiently  to  accomplish  an  end  that  was 
never  realized.  It  is  a  fascinating  speculation,  but 
profitless,  as  it  leads  nowhere. 

The  circumstances  that  gave  a  Catholic  proprietor 
a  Protestant  charter,  that  made  him  realize  that  he 
was  always  under  suspicion  and  was  narrowly 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        285 

watched  by  his  enemies  in  England,  who,  controlled 
by  bigotry  no  less  than  covetousness,  were  alert  to 
find  an  opportunity  to  oust  him  so  as  to  profit  by 
his  misfortune,  made  the  Maryland  Catholics  more 
moderate  and  tolerant  than  their  age,  and  those 
qualities  have  always  characterized  the  Church  in 
America.  There  has  never  been  any  clash  of  au 
thority  between  the  Catholic  hierarchy  in  the  United 
States  and  the  temporal  power;  no  American  Catho 
lic  has  served  Church  and  State  with  a  divided 
allegiance;  the  Catholic  Church,  while  teaching  its 
own  creed,  has  ever  taught  the  higher  creed  of 
obedience  to  the  State  and  respect  for  civil  authority. 
Catholicism  in  America  has  not  destroyed  or  weak 
ened  the  fibre  of  American  Republicanism;  from  a 
small  beginning  the  Church  has  grown  and  become 
a  mighty  instrument  in  the  development  of  Ameri 
can  character,  but  it  has  been  accomplished  without 
the  direct  participation  of  the  Church  in  politics. 
In  other  countries  the  Catholic  Church  found  it 
necessary,  or  at  least  believed  it  to  be  advisable,  to 
become  an  active  political  factor  and  to  endeavor 
to  influence  the  action  of  parties,  but  it  has  never 
done  so  in  America.  Baltimore's  first  settlers  were 
moderates,  and  their  descendants  were  equally 
moderate.  Ultramontanism  was  unknown,  and  it 
was  only  later,  after  the  Revolution,  in  the  first 
decade  of  the  nineteenth  century,  that  the  heavy 
immigration  of  Irish  Catholics,  to  be  later  strength 
ened  by  the  immigration  from  other  Catholic  coun- 


286  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tries  of  Europe,  profoundly  affected  and  modified 
the  character  of  American  Catholicism,  aroused  the 
last  vestige  of  Puritan  intolerance,  and  led  to 
Know-Nothingism  and  the  abortive  attempt  to 
inject  religion  into  politics  by  the  creation  of  the 
A.  P.  A.1 

But  in  Baltimore's  day  Catholics  and  Protestants 
lived  on  neighborly  terms.  At  one  time  the  domi- 

1  The  American  Protective  Association,  or  A.  P.  A.  as  it  was  generally 
called,  was  founded  in  1887  as  a  secret  political  association,  nominally  to  em 
brace  "  all  who  will  be  true  Americans,  irrespective  of  race,  color,  creed,  origi 
nal  nationality,  or  previous  conditions  of  life,"  but  actually  to  curb  the  power 
of  the  Catholic  Church  in  America.  In  its  high-sounding  declaration  of 
principles  the  animus  of  the  association  is  revealed  in  holding  "that  support 
of  any  ecclesiastical  power  of  non-American  character  which  claims  higher 
sovereignty  than  that  of  the  United  States,  is  irreconcilable  with  American 
citizenship";  and  in  its  protest  "against  the  employment  of  the  subjects  of 
any  un-American  ecclesiastical  power  as  officers  or  teachers  of  our  public 
schools."  Bowers,  who  founded  the  Association,  explained  its  purpose  in 
these  words:  "The  chief  idea  we  had  in  view  in  the  constitution  was  this: 
that  we  had  no  right  under  the  Constitution  of  this  country  to  oppose  any 
religious  body  on  account  of  its  dogmatic  views,  faith,  etc.,  but  we  did  be 
lieve  we  had  a  right  to  oppose  it  when  it  became  a  great  political  factor.  We 
believed  then  and  we  believe  now  that  every  man  in  this  country  has  a  right 
to  worship  God  according  to  the  dictates  of  his  conscience,  but  we  did  not 
believe  that  the  Constitution  intended  to  convey  the  right  to  any  set  of  men 
to  control  and  manipulate  the  political  affairs  of  this  country  to  the  aggran 
dizement  of  any  ecclesiastical  power."  — Malcolm  Townsend:  Handbook  of 
United  States  Political  History,  pp.  152-153. 

The  A.  P.  A.  rapidly  gained  a  large  membership  and  for  a  brief  time  was 
a  terrifying  bogey  to  timorous  politicians,  but  it  never  exerted  any  political 
power  and  soon  collapsed,  an  exotic  that  could  find  no  nourishment  in  the 
soil  of  America,  which  nurtures  every  liberal  idea,  no  matter  how  prepos 
terous,  but  breeds  no  bigotry. 

The  Know-Nothing  Party,  formed  in  1852,  was  avowedly  opposed  to 
Romanism  and  in  favor  of  the  election  to  public  office  of  none  but  native- 
bora  Americans.  It  existed  for  four  years,  and  during  that  time  exerted 
considerable  political  influence. 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        287 

nant  religion,  later  Catholics  were  sorely  persecuted ; 
the  Church  of  England,  that  afterwards  was  to  be 
more  powerful  than  any  other  creed,  was,  in  the 
first  years,  surpassed  in  wealth  and  the  number  of 
its  communicants  by  noncomformism,  and  as  late 
as  1677  there  were  only  three  Anglican  clergymen 
in  the  colony,  and  the  few  churches  were  without 
endowment  and  had  to  rely  on  the  uncertain  gener 
osity  of  their  congregations  for  the  support  of  their 
ministers.  In  the  House  of  Burgesses  a  few  years 
before  three  quarters  of  the  members  were  Puritans. 
They  had  come  from  Massachusetts  as  well  as 
Virginia,  and  were  in  numbers  sufficient  to  estab 
lish  a  community  of  their  own  at  Ann  Arundel.1 
Maryland,  it  is  true,  was  a  Catholic  colony,  but  the 
influence  of  the  Puritans  was  strong,  and  it  was  this 
coexistence  of  sects  and  creeds  that  differentiated 
Maryland  from  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  and 
brought  a  new  element  to  form  the  American 
character. 

The  men  who  first  planted  Maryland  were  made 
of  better  stuff  than  the  neighboring  Virginians, 
and  in  this  as  in  so  many  other  things  Baltimore 
showed  his  sound  sense  and  his  wide  vision,  and 
probably  he  was  able  to  profit  by  the  experience  of 
the  Virginia  Company.  The  scum  of  the  jails  and 
the  slums  was  not  gathered  up  to  be  thrown  down 
in  Maryland,  and  inducements  were  offered  to 
sound  energetic  men  to  start  a  new  life.  But  Mary- 

1  Bozman:  History  of  Maryland,  vol.  ii,  p.  398. 


288          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

land,  to  speak  quite  frankly,  similar  to  all  the  other 
English  possessions  of  that  day,  was  regarded  as  a 
convenient  place  for  the  disposal  of  criminals,  and 
to  it  convicts  were  sent  in  large  numbers.  "The 
number  of  convicts  imported  into  Maryland  before 
the  revolution  of  1776,"  Scharf  tell  us,  "  must  have 
amounted  to  at  least  twenty  thousand.  From  the 
year  1750  to  1770  not  less  than  four  to  five  hundred 
were  annually  brought  into  the  province."  l  This 
estimate  is  confirmed  by  other  writers.  The  colonists 
bitterly  resented  that  Maryland  should  be  made  a 
penal  colony,  and  protests  proving  vain,  acts  were 
passed  by  the  legislature  prohibiting  the  importa 
tion  of  criminals,  but  these  acts  were  declared  void 
by  the  Crown.  The  legislature  then  resorted  to  the 
expedient  of  taxing  criminals,  under  the  clause  of 
the  charter  which  gave  the  colony  the  power  to 
levy  duties  on  imported  merchandise,  on  the  ground 
that  as  convicts  were  sold  for  service  on  their  arrival 
in  the  colony,  they  were  merchandise  and  not  men, 
and  subject  to  duty.  But  this  construction  of  the 
charter  the  Crown  overruled,  and  the  practice  of 
exporting  criminals  to  Maryland  as  well  as  to  other 
American  colonies  continued  until  the  Revolution 
broke  the  power  of  England  to  make  the  New 
World  a  dumping-ground  for  its  criminals  and  pau 
pers.  It  is  only  proper  to  add, 'that  while  many  of 
the  criminals  were  felons,  many  were  unfortunate 
rather  than  vicious ;  many  had  committed  no  greater 

1  Scharf:  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  371. 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        289 

offense  than  to  fail  in  business ;  some  were  political 
prisoners  who  had  plotted  against  the  Crown  or  had 
been  taken  with  arms  in  their  hands.  They  were  a 
mixed  lot,  not  all  bad,  but  few  of  them  better  than 
indifferent. 

Climatically  very  similar  to  Virginia,  and  like 
Virginia  with  convenient  water  transportation  mak 
ing  the  laborious  work  of  road-building  unnecessary, 
the  culture  of  tobacco  was  carried  on  in  Maryland 
and  was  a  source  of  great  wealth,  which  required 
the  use  of  African  slaves  and  white  indented  ser 
vants.  In  Maryland  as  in  Virginia,  everywhere,  in 
fact,  where  slavery  became  an  institution,  it  put  a 
stigma  upon  free  labor  and  caused  the  free  white 
man  to  lose  his  self-respect  by  being  compelled  to 
do  work  that  was  regarded  as  fit  only  for  bonds 
men  belonging  to  an  inferior  race,  or  criminals  who 
were  made  to  labor  in  the  fields  as  a  punishment. 
With  the  growth  of  the  colonies  Maryland  became 
a  wheat-raising  as  well  as  a  tobacco-growing  pro 
vince,  and  some  of  the  largest  landowners  found  it 
more  profitable  to  turn  their  tobacco  lands  into 
wheat.  Virginia  always  clung  to  tobacco  and  slav 
ery;  Maryland,  as  her  wheat-fields  multiplied  and 
the  export  of  flour  became  a  profitable  trade  and 
Baltimore  a  port  of  first  importance,  was  less 
dependent  upon  servile  labor  for  her  prosperity, 
which  in  time  modified  political  views.  Virginia 
after  wavering  threw  in  her  lot  with  the  other  slave- 
holding  states  and  joined  the  Confederacy;  Mary- 


290          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

land  remained  loyal  to  the  Union  that  she  had 
helped  to  create. 

Baltimore  laid  the  foundation  of  his  local  govern 
ment  in  the  manorial  system  of  England,  and  every 
grant  of  2,000  acres  or  more  was  created  a  manor 
with  court  baron  and  court  leet,  the  master  of  the 
manor  exercising  feudal  rights,  and  around  him 
grew  up  a  tenantry.  The  cultivation  of  tobacco  had 
the  same  political  and  social  effects  in  Maryland 
as  in  Virginia;  the  proprietor  found  it  more  profit 
able  to  cultivate  the  Indian  weed  himself  on  a  large 
scale  than  to  split  up  his  holding  among  tenants 
and  be  paid  in  kind,  "and  the  feudal  society  of  the 
manor"  was  transformed  into  "the  patriarchal 
society  of  the  plantation."  As  in  Virginia  so  in 
Maryland,  tobacco  "afforded  an  instance  of  how 
much  a  staple  may  not  only  regulate  a  people's 
conduct  and  habits,  but  become  part  of  their 
thoughts  and  even  enter  into  their  dreams."  From 
the  lord  proprietor  down  every  one  was  paid  in 
tobacco,  tobacco  meant  wealth,  wealth  was  reck 
oned  in  hogsheads  of  tobacco.  All  law,  all  society 
revolved  around  this  little  brown  plant ;  society  was 
organized  to  protect  it  and  to  make  it  more  valuable ; 
like  gold  it  was  the  yardstick  of  value  because  to  it 
the  mints  were  always  open.  "Its  purity  was  more 
fiercely  defended  than  the  chastity  of  woman,  and 
the  forger  of  an  inspector's  note  was  to  be  whipped 
and  pilloried.  Debts  in  tobacco  were  protected  over 
debts  in  coin,  and  judgment,  bonds  and  mortages 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        291 

might  be  both  given  and  paid  in  tobacco."  The 
mint  for  the  free  and  unlimited  conversion  of 
tobacco  into  money  was  found  in  the  official  ware 
house  of  the  province,  where  tobacco  was  stored 
and  inspected  and  a  receipt  given  by  a  sworn  inspec 
tor,  which  could  always  be  negotiated  for  a  bill  of 
exchange  on  London. 

Both  the  feudal  and  patriarchal  states  of  society 
created  a  class  of  large  landowners,  who  lived  a 
free,  hospitable  and  generous  life,  which  later  be 
came  reckless  and  impoverished  their  descendants ; 
but  in  the  Golden  Age  of  Tobacco  it  was  very 
delightful  and  fascinating ;  the  men  were  developing 
the  wealth  of  the  colony  and  taking  an  active  share 
in  its  political  affairs,  and  were  being  strengthened 
to  fit  themselves  for  the  part  they  were  to  play  in 
that  great  political  drama  which  was  to  make  the 
last  quarter  of  the  eighteenth  century  so  memorable ; 
the  women  with  all  their  dainty  prettiness  bred 
strong  men.  Scharf  paints  none  too  flattering  a 
picture  of  the  men  whose  history  he  has  chronicled 
and  of  the  state  he  proudly  claims  as  his  own. 
"The  Maryland  colonists,"  he  says,  "were  not  a 
well  educated  people,  and  it  must  be  confessed 
that  they  thought  more  of  horse-racing  and  cock- 
fighting  than  they  did  of  books."  After  Baltimore 
and  his  first  settlers  came  the  generations  who  had 
too  much  forest  to  cut  down  to  be  able  to  spare 
much  time  for  the  schoolmaster.  The  people  of 
means  with  a  desire  for  education  went  to  England 


THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  acquire  it,  "but  the  greater  part  of  the  young 
Marylanders  were  more  like  Harry  Warrington 
than  like  his  brother  George.  Fox-hunting  in  the 
morning,  and  cards  and  dancing  at  night,  left  them 
little  time  for  books."  l  Towards  the  end  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  in  1770,  Scharf  notes  that  there 
was  socially  a  distinct  aristocratic  class  in  Mary 
land,  a  class  comparatively  large,  most  of  whose 
members  were  wealthy  and  some  of  whom  were 
well  educated.  As  in  Virginia,  their  fortunes  rested 
on  lands  and  slaves.  They  communicated  with  one 
another,  but  did  not  associate  with  the  other  classes. 
The  province,  taking  more  after  Virginia  in  that 
respect  than  Massachusetts,  had  no  general  system 
of  schools  and  no  large  class  of  tractarians  and  dis 
putants  whose  arguments  affected  the  people  as  a 
whole.  It  was  no  part  of  a  "gentleman's"  require 
ments  of  that  time  to  be  over  particular  about  his 
syntax  or  spelling,  and  gentlemen  could  find  better 
and  more  amusing  things  to  do  than  to  write 
pamphlets  or  discuss  public  affairs  through  the 
newspapers,  of  which  there  were  only  two  in  Mary 
land  in  1775  and  the  same  number  in  Virginia, 
while  in  Massachusetts  there  were  seven;  but  it  is 
to  be  remembered  that  the  press  exercised  far  less 
influence  than  it  does  to-day,  and  it  was  in  the 
Assembly  and  the  town  and  other  meetings  that 
the  real  work  of  government  was  carried  on  and 
public  opinion  formed. 

1  Scharf:  op.  cit.,  vol.  ii,  p.  18. 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        293 

The  social  life  of  the  colony  centred  in  Annapolis, 
which  was  a  very  gay  and  fashionable  little  city, 
where  there  was  much  wealth  and  extravagance, 
and  people  were  as  keen  to  be  amused  as  high 
society  is  to-day  in  London  or  Newport  or  New 
York.  One  writer  says  that  no  city  of  the  same  size 
in  England  could  boast  so  many  handsome  and 
fashionable  women.  They  danced  and  went  to  the 
theatre  and  horse  races,  for  the  Marylanders  have 
always  been  passionately  fond  of  horse-racing;  the 
men  wagered  their  money  on  horses  and  cards  and 
cockfights,  and  every  one  from  the  highest  to  the 
lowest  regarded  cockfighting  as  the  greatest  of  all 
sports ;  and  Puritans,  who  denounced  the  theatre  as 
the  devil's  own  device,  saw  no  sin  in  watching  two 
birds  tear  each  other  to  pieces. 

I  pass  over  the  quarrels  between  Virginia  and 
Maryland,  Leah  and  Rachel,  the  Two  Fruitful 
Sisters,  as  a  seventeenth  century  pamphleteer  calls 
them,  as  merely  an  incident  in  the  life  of  a  nation 
and  having  no  lasting  influence  on  the  development 
of  character;  nor  need  much  more  time  be  given 
to  considering  the  manifestation  of  that  new  spirit 
that  made  the  Englishman  in  America  always  a 
rebel  and  always  quick  to  resist  the  encroachment 
of  his  governors.  We  have  seen  how  these  hot- 
tempered  Virginians  held  on  to  the  purse-strings 
and  clung  to  the  control  of  taxation  as  the  great  safe 
guard  of  their  liberties,  and  how  Nathaniel  Bacon 
led  an  armed  force  against  Sir  William  Berkeley. 


294          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Bacon's  example  was  followed  in  the  palatinate. 
Cecilius  died  in  1675  and  was  succeeded  by  his  son 
Charles,  an  arbitrary  and  narrow-minded  man,  who 
had  none  of  his  father's  tact  and  breadth  of  vision 
or  that  genius  for  colonial  administration  that 
makes  the  founder  of  Maryland  so  respected.  Dis 
content,  which  had  long  been  smouldering,  broke 
into  open  fire  when  Bacon  raised  the  standard  of 
revolt,  and  a  paper  was  circulated  alleging  the 
grievances  of  the  Maryland  colonists.  Davis  and 
Pate,  men  of  substance,  gathered  an  armed  force 
to  intimidate  the  governor  and  compel  him  to 
grant  the  concessions  they  demanded,  but  the 
collapse  of  Bacon's  rebellion  in  Virginia  put  a 
speedy  end  to  sedition  in  Maryland.  Davis  and 
Pate  were  hanged,  the  people  deprived  of  their 
leaders  had  no  heart  for  resistance,  and  there  was 
no  further  attempt  to  overthrow  the  authority  of 
the  lord  proprietor.  Briefly  to  be  considered  as 
part  of  the  political  education  of  the  English  colo 
nists  in  America,  which  logically  led  up  to  their 
separation  from  the  mother  country  and  resulted 
in  the  birth  of  a  new  nation,  was  the  development 
of  parliamentary  government,  which  in  England 
manifested  itself  in  the  assertion  of  the  rights  of  the 
Commons  against  the  assumed  prerogatives  of  the 
King,  and  was  intensified  by  being  transplanted  to 
a  new  soil.  After  the  Restoration  Englishmen  in 
England  were  at  times  careless  about  the  usurped 
power  of  the  Crown,  although  they  never  surren- 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        295 

dered  the  principle  of  the  power  of  the  people 
to  govern,  but  in  America  they  watched  with 
jealousy  every  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  proprietors 
or  royal  governors  to  extend  their  authority  at  the 
expense  of  the  popular  assembly,  and  were  ever 
ready  to  resist  it. 

There  existed  in  England  at  that  time,  and  even 
before  the  first  Englishman  set  foot  on  the  New 
World,  two  schools  of  political  thought,  as  there 
have  from  the  day  when  men  first  realized  that  the 
greatest  enemy  of  progress  is  that  peculiar  mental 
condition  which  regards  with  aversion  whatever  is 
new  or  is  different  from  what  has  long  been  known. 
In  a  word,  the  forces  of  progress  have  always  had 
to  contend  with  the  forces  of  reaction.  The  political 
teachings  of  More  and  Hobbes  and  Locke,  the 
entrancing  vista  of  physical  research  opened  up  by 
Bacon  and  Newton,  the  religious  speculations  of 
Jeremy  Taylor  and  Tillotson  and  Butler,  had  with 
dynamic  force  driven  Englishmen  forward  on  the 
road  to  individualism  and  given  them  a  new  concep 
tion  of  the  relation  between  man  and  the  state. 
They  were  further  fortified  by  the  spirit  of  adven 
ture  and  daring  that  filled  them  as  with  new  wine 
and  stirred  the  imagination  and  taught  them  the 
great  lesson  of  self-reliance  and  determination. 
These  were  the  Englishmen  who  were  no  longer 
content  to  believe  in  the  inerrancy  of  the  doctrine 
of  the  divine  right  of  kings,  and  who,  while  accept 
ing  royalty  and  a  class  system  as  a  natural  social 


296          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

arrangement,  still  claimed  the  right  to  be  masters 
of  themselves.  The  Englishmen  who  settled  Amer 
ica  were  in  the  very  nature  of  things  individu 
alists.  If  they  developed  political  methods  and 
political  ideals  different  from  the  mother  country, 
as  some  writers  contend,  it  was  the  result  of  cir 
cumstances  and  conditions  that  influenced  them 
mentally  as  they  influenced  them  physically.  Every 
thing  tended  to  the  development  of  individualism, 
which  is  one  of  the  marked  characteristics  of  the 
modern  American. 

I  note  here  briefly,  to  be  referred  to  more  at 
length  later,  that  there  was  another  cause  to  develop 
this  marked  sense  of  political  idealism  in  the  Eng 
lishman  in  America.  The  Englishman  in  England 
was  never  insular,  in  the  larger  political  sense,  but 
was  always  continental  and  international;  he  was 
part  of  the  great  dynastic  and  military  forces  that 
were  never  still,  whose  shock  was  felt  in  every  hamlet 
throughout  the  land.  The  Englishman  in  America, 
in  those  days,  was  politically  isolated.  The  Eng 
lishman  at  home  was  often  confused  and  distracted 
by  many  things ;  war,  rebellion,  reasons  of  state  made 
him  repeatedly  submit  to  evils  that  he  knew  of  but 
which  were  his  sacrifice  to  patriotism.  The  Eng 
lishman  in  America  had  no  such  demands  made 
upon  him.  There  were  no  cross  currents  to  vex  him 
and  make  his  course  uncertain.  He  need  devote 
his  energies  to  two  things,  and  two  things  only:  to 
improve  his  material  condition  and  to  develop  the 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        297 

political  system  which  he  had  founded;  and  as  he 
was  removed  from  the  politics  of  Europe,  so  his  own 
politics  become  to  him  not  only  the  most  important 
that  he  knew,  but  they  were  the  only  road  that  led 
to  fame.  In  England  men  could  win  distinction  in 
the  military  service,  in  the  church,  at  the  bar,  as  well 
as  in  politics;  but  in  America,  in  early  colonial 
days,  the  one  reward  for  ability  was  political.  We 
overlook  one  of  the  fundamental  causes  that  pro 
duced  the  American  character  if  we  do  not  grasp  the 
salient  difference  between  the  Englishman  at  home 
and  the  Englishman  in  America,  and  fail  to  give 
proper  weight  to  the  influence  of  political  isolation. 
The  parliament  of  Maryland  consisted  of  an 
upper  house  or  council,  whose  members  were 
appointed  by  the  lord  proprietor  and  were  largely 
kinsmen  or  men  on  whom  he  could  rely  to  execute 
his  wishes,  and  the  House  of  Burgesses,  whose  mem 
bers  were  elected;  in  a  word,  a  miniature  repro 
duction  of  the  Lords  and  Commons  of  England. 
Baltimore  intended  to  deprive  the  lower  house  of 
the  power  to  initiate  legislation,  and  give  it  merely 
the  form  of  authority  without  the  substance,  by 
graciously  permitting  it  to  comment  on  acts  laid 
before  it  by  the  proprietor  or  his  representative,  the 
governor.  To  Englishmen,  who  were  full  of  the 
spirit  of  self-government,  such  an  invitation  to  a 
Barmecide  feast  was  to  be  spurned  as  an  insult. 
They  would  be  no  mere  slaves  to  clank  their  chains 
in  submission  at  the  command  of  a  master.  They 


298          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

were  freemen  with  rights  and  privileges,  which  were 
theirs  as  much  in  America  as  in  England.  Balti 
more,  tactful  and  liberal,  yielded  and  gave  to  the 
Assembly  the  right  to  initiate  legislation,  but  he 
retained  the  veto  power,  which  by  his  own  con 
struction  permitted  him  to  repeal  an  act  even 
after  it  had  gone  into  force.  It  was  one  of  the  great 
grievances  of  the  colonists,  the  proprietor's  veto 
power,  which  they  always  resented.  For  many 
years  there  were  stormy  times  between  the  upper 
and  lower  houses.  The  Council  insisted  that  the 
right  to  tax  was  not  inherent  in  the  House  of  Bur 
gesses,  the  latter  asserted  that  it  possessed  the 
functions  of  the  Commons  of  England  and  con 
trolled  the  purse.  In  all  those  years  nothing  very 
vital  happened,  but  character  was  being  formed, 
men  were  learning  the  great  art  of  self-government, 
and  were  preparing  themselves  to  assert  their 
political  freedom. 

But  more  important  than  the  petty  quarrels 
between  neighboring  colonies  or  incipient  rebellion 
was  the  persecution  of  the  Catholics.  It  is  one  of 
the  delightful  ironies  of  history  —  and  history  is  so 
largely  a  record  of  sardonic  humor  —  that  Mary 
land,  founded  by  a  Catholic,  offering  asylum  to 
Catholics,  and  setting  an  example  of  tolerance  to 
all  sects,  should,  in  a  little  more  than  half  a  century 
after  the  first  cross  was  erected  at  St.  Mary's,  pro 
scribe  and  persecute  Roman  Catholics. 

I  have  pointed  out  in  a  previous  chapter  that  the 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        299 

difference  between  Protestants  and  Catholics  was 
political  rather  than  religious,  and  that  English 
Protestants  looked  upon  English  Catholics  as 
enemies  of  the  state  and  traitors  to  the  cause  of 
civil  liberty.  It  was  the  Catholics,  Protestants 
believed,  who  were  continually  plotting  with  foreign 
Catholic  sovereigns  to  overthrow  the  established 
order  in  England  and  bring  it  under  Catholic 
dominion  and  politically  enslave  the  nation.  It  was 
not  alone  the  form  of  worship  that  was  so  repellant 
to  English  Protestants,  it  was  something  more  than 
that,  which  struck  at  the  Englishman's  whole  con 
cept  of  political  and  civil  life.  He  was  free,  and  to 
him  freedom  and  Catholicism  were  incompatible. 
He  had  fought  to  preserve  that  freedom,  and  he 
believed  that  he  should  lose  his  precious  heritage 
if  England  acknowledged  the  spiritual  supremacy 
of  the  Supreme  Pontiff. 

When  James  II  fled  and  William  of  Orange  was 
called  to  the  throne  of  England,  panic  seized  the 
Protestants  of  America,  who  feared  that  America 
was  to  be  made  the  battle-ground  of  religions,  and 
that  in  the  coming  struggle  between  the  deposed 
Stuart,  backed  by  the  troops  of  the  French  Papist, 
and  the  Protestant  Prince  of  Orange  the  Catholics 
in  America  would  side  with  their  coreligionists  in 
England  and  celebrate  religious  freedom  in  the  new 
world  by  another  Huguenot  massacre.  It  was  a 
senseless  panic  that  possessed  these  hard-headed, 
clear-thinking  Englishmen,  but  to  them  the  danger 


300          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

seemed  very  real.  The  Protestants  in  Maryland 
waited  to  see  what  would  happen,  whether  Balti 
more  would  acknowledge  William  or  remain  loyal 
to  the  deposed  King,  and  the  council  was  eagerly 
watching  for  the  first  sign  of  official  action.  Balti 
more  had  promptly  dispatched  a  messenger  with 
instructions  to  the  Council  to  proclaim  William 
and  Mary,  but  the  messenger  died  on  the  way  and 
there  was  a  long  delay  before  a  second  messenger 
could  arrive  with  his  instructions.  Meanwhile  an 
"association  in  arms"  had  been  formed  "for  the 
defence  of  the  Protestant  Religion,  and  for  asserting 
the  right  of  King  William  and  Queen  Mary  to  the 
Province  of  Maryland  and  all  the  English  Domin 
ions,"  and  seven  hundred  men  in  arms  under  the 
leadership  of  John  Goode  marched  on  St.  Mary's, 
the  provincial  capital.  The  Council  fled  without 
offering  resistance,  King  William  brought  action 
to  annul  Baltimore's  charter,  and  in  1691  sent  out 
Sir  Lionel  Copley  as  royal  governor  of  Maryland. 
In  this  way  Baltimore  lost  his  province,  and  the 
palatinate  of  Maryland  no  longer  existed. 

In  Virginia  the  change  from  Commonwealth 
to  Monarchy  had  been  brought  about  without 
bitterness  because  there  were  no  politico-religious 
consequences  to  be  feared  and  liberty  was  not 
threatened,  but  in  Maryland  the  accession  of 
William  and  Mary  gave  the  Protestants  the  oppor 
tunity  they  had  long  sought.  They  had  accepted 
without  enthusiasm  a  Catholic  proprietor,  and  had 


FIRST  CATHOLIC   COLONY        301 

always  been  jealous  of  the  dominant  part  played  by 
Catholics  in  the  government  of  the  colony ;  they  had 
feared  it  would  become  catholicized,  which  would 
put  an  end  to  their  hard- won  civil  and  political 
liberties.  So  long  as  Baltimore  kept  his  own  relig 
ious  views  in  the  background  they  gave  him  loyal 
support,  but  they  were  ever  watchful. 

And  now  the  time  had  come  when  the  Protestants 
could  strike  down  their  enemy,  and  they  struck 
swiftly  and  brutally.  With  that  charity  and  liberal 
ity  that  made  churchmen  at  one  time  regard  creed 
as  more  important  than  the  moral  observance  of  the 
teachings  of  religion,  the  Protestants  proceeded  to 
show  how  they  despised  God  when  he  was  not 
worshipped  according  to  their  own  narrow  little 
formula.  Taxes  were  levied  for  the  support  of  the 
Church  of  England,  persons  professing  the  Catholic 
religion  were  prohibited  from  entering  the  colony, 
the  public  celebration  of  the  mass  was  forbidden. 
As  the  Protestant  element  came  to  have  a  firmer 
grip  upon  the  government,  so  they  persecuted  more 
shamelessly  the  Catholics.  Two  Catholic  priests, 
William  Hunter  and  Robert  Brooker,  were  sum 
moned  before  the  Governor  and  Council,  the  one  for 
having  consecrated  a  chapel,  the  other  for  having 
said  mass  in  it;  and  as  this  was  their  first  offense 
they  were  let  off  with  a  reprimand,  "which  his 
Excellency  was  pleased  to  give,"  in  the  following 
gentle  language :  — 

"It  is  the  unhappy  temper  of  you  and  all  your 


302          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

tribe  to  grow  insolent  upon  civility  and  never  to 
know  how  to  use  it,  and  yet  of  all  people  you  have 
the  least  reason  for  considering  that  if  the  necessary 
laws  that  are  made  were  let  loose,  they  are  sufficient 
to  crush  you,  and  which  (if  your  arrogant  principles 
have  not  blinded  you)  you  must  need  to  dread. 

'You  might,  methinks,  be  contented  to  live 
quietly  as  you  may,  and  let  the  exercise  of  your 
superstitious  vanities  be  confined  to  yourselves  with 
out  proclaiming  them  at  public  times  and  in  public 
places,  unless  you  expect,  by  your  gaudy  shows  and 
serpentine  policy,  to  amuse  the  multitude  and  be 
guile  the  unthinking,  weakest  part  of  them,  an  act  of 
deceit  well  known  to  be  among  you."  Having  warned 
them  that  there  were  means  to  curb  their  insolence, 
this  mild-spoken  governor  continued  his  admonition : 
"In  plain  and  few  words,  gentlemen,  if  you  intend 
to  live  here,  let  me  hear  no  more  of  these  things ;  for 
if  I  do,  and  they  are  made  good  against  you,  be 
assured  I  '11  chastise  you ;  and  lest  you  should 
flatter  yourselves  that  the  severity  of  the  laws  will 
be  a  means  to  move  the  pity  of  your  judges,  I  assure 
you  I  do  not  intend  to  deal  with  you  so.  I'll  re 
move  the  evil  by  sending  you  where  you  may  be 
dealt  with  as  you  deserve.  Pray  take  notice  that 
I  am  an  English  Protestantgentleman,  and  can  never 
equivocate."  Whereupon  the  unfortunate  priests 
were  dismissed  and  the  sheriff  was  ordered  to  lock  up 
the  chapel  and  keep  the  key.1 

1  Scharf :  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  368. 


FIRST   CATHOLIC   COLONY        303 

The  Governor,  like  many  another  servant  of  the 
people,  understood  the  art  of  popularity  by  voicing 
the  sentiment  of  the  majority.  So  pleased  was  the 
House  of  Burgesses  with  his  reprimand  that  it 
adopted  an  address  thanking  him  for  having  "gen 
erously  bent  to  protect  her  majesty's  Protestant 
subjects  here  against  insolence  and  growth  of 
Popery,  and  we  feel  cheerfully  thankful  to  you  for 
it."  In  view  of  the  attitude  of  Governor  and  legis 
lature  it  was  not  surprising  that  they  should  go  to 
still  further  lengths  in  their  zeal  to  stamp  out  Cathol 
icism.  In  1704,  the  year  after  the  reprimand,  an 
act  was  passed  imposing  a  fine  of  £50  and  imprison 
ment  for  six  months  upon  any  popish  bishop,  priest 
or  Jesuit  who  "should  endeavor  to  persuade  any  of 
his  majesty's  liege  people  of  this  province  to  embrace 
and  be  reconciled  to  the  Church  of  Rome" ;  and  any 
person  who  said  mass,  or  who  being  a  Catholic, 
should  keep  school,  or  take  upon  himself  the  educa 
tion,  government  or  boarding  of  youth  at  any  place 
in  the  province,  upon  conviction,  was  to  be  trans 
ported  to  England  to  be  dealt  with  there  under  the 
statutes  for  further  preventing  the  growth  of  popery. 
And  still  the  work  went  on.  Catholics  were  dis 
franchised  unless  they  took  the  test  oath.  When 
Charles  Calvert,  the  fifth  Lord  Baltimore,  was 
restored  to  the  proprietorship  by  George  I,  Calvert 
having  adjured  Catholicism  and  become  a  Protes 
tant,  even  more  rigorous  laws  were  enacted,  which 
effectually  excluded  Catholics  from  all  participation 


304          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

in  the  government.  They  were  required  to  take  the 
oath  of  allegiance,  abhorrency  and  abjuration,  to 
which  no  devout  Catholic  could  subscribe;  and 
while  they  were  excluded  from  any  share  in  the 
government  they  were  taxed  for  its  support.  But 
although  the  Catholics  were  oppressed  and  sub 
jected  to  much  petty  annoyance  and  vindictive  per 
secution  they  were  preeminently  the  picked  men  of 
the  colony,  Fiske  points  out,  an  opinion  which 
every  historian  of  Maryland  must  share.  They  were 
the  backbone  of  the  colony  and  gave  it  a  character 
of  its  own  as  the  Puritan  did  in  Massachusetts  and 
the  Cavaliers  in  Virginia ;  and  the  influence  of  these 
early  Catholic  settlers  is  seen  in  the  Revolution,  in 
the  Civil  War,  and  on  the  Maryland  as  we  know  it 
to-day.  The  long  religious  struggle  had  sown  the 
seeds  of  discontent,  and  curiously  enough  Maryland 
was  ripe  for  rebellion  before  Massachusetts  or  Vir 
ginia.  Maryland  had  felt,  as  no  other  colony  then 
had,  the  injustice  of  being  ruled  from  across  the  sea, 
and  while  the  connection  with  England  was  advan 
tageous,  it  was  also  oppressive.  The  time  had  not 
yet  come  for  any  Englishman  seriously  to  propose 
to  sever  the  tie,  but  the  folly  of  rulers  had  prepared 
men's  minds  for  it;  and  when  they  were  faced  with 
the  alternative  of  submitting  further  to  injustice  or 
resisting  it  in  arms,  the  shock  was  less  violent  than 
it  would  have  been  had  not  the  quarrels  of  church 
men  paved  the  way. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

RICE   PRODUCES   NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS 

IT  is  in  the  blood  of  the  Englishman  never  to  be 
still.  Accounted  the  most  phlegmatic  of  races,  the 
English  are  consumed  with  a  resistless  desire  for 
discovery  and  adventure.  Popularly  supposed  to 
have  less  imagination  than  the  Latin  and  Celt,  and 
deficient  in  that  quality  of  poetic  and  speculative 
dreaming  that  is  characteristic  of  the  Teuton, 
nevertheless  their  imagination  has  always  been  pro 
foundly  stirred  by  the  mystery  of  the  unknown 
continent,  by  the  knowledge  that  seas  were  to  be 
charted  and  lands  to  be  mapped ;  to  find  out  where 
rivers  led  or  what  existed  behind  a  range  of  moun 
tains  has  ever  been  with  them  a  passion.  And  per 
haps  more  than  any  other  race  they  have  been 
possessed  with  an  insatiable  land  hunger.  It  is 
this  that  has  made  them  colonizers  and  conquerors, 
that  has  planted  the  flag  of  England  deep  in  the 
snows  of  the  north  and  far  under  the  burning  skies 
of  the  tropics.  Love  of  commerce  and  love  of  gain 
animated  them,  but  these  would  have  been  insuffi 
cient  to  make  them  brave  danger  and  hardship  if 
they  had  not  been  possessed  of  that  resistless  love 
of  adventure. 


306          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

That  insatiable  land  hunger  was  not  appeased 
by  transplanting  the  Englishman  from  England  to 
America.  Love  of  adventure  and  the  commercial 
advantages  that  were  to  accrue  from  the  planting 
of  the  new  world  were  the  motives  that  spurred 
Raleigh ;  the  desire  to  expand  and  to  own  still  more 
territory  made  Massachusetts  colonize  the  north 
and  explore  the  south.  The  Virginians,  with  a  vir 
gin  territory  to  develop,  cast  curious  and  covetous 
eyes  on  the  terra  incognita  to  the  south  of  them; 
those  sturdy  Puritans  found  their  energies  not 
satisfied  in  building  up  their  own  colony,  but  must 
ever  extend  their  frontiers  and  carve  new  settle 
ments  out  of  the  wilderness;  and  "New  England 
enterprise  explored  the  American  coast  from  one 
end  to  the  other,  in  search  of  lucrative  trade  and 
new  resting  places."  In  the  course  of  their  wan 
derings  these  men  from  the  north  came  to  the  North 
Carolina  coast,  and  near  the  mouth  of  the  Cape 
Fear  River  settled  on  land  bought  from  the  Indians. 
But  the  climate  was  unsuited  to  them  and  the 
surroundings  displeased  them,  and  after  a  short 
sojourn  they  went  away;  first,  however,  leaving  in 
writing  and  affixed  to  a  post  for  the  benefit  of  pos 
terity  their  opinion  of  the  country  in  characteris 
tically  blunt  New  England  manner.  Here  it  was 
found  some  years  later  by  immigrants  from  the 
Barbadoes.  But  before  that  a  few  scattered  settlers 
had  drifted  in  from  Virginia,  "with  here  a  solitary 
plantation,  and  there  a  little  group  of  farms,  and 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        307 

always  a  restless  van  of  adventurers  working  their 
way  down  the  coast  and  into  the  interior."  *  This 
was  the  beginning  of  what  at  that  time,  1663,  was 
known  as  Carolina,  but  which  later  was  split 
into  the  two  provinces  of  North  and  South  Carolina 
and  under  those  names  became  states  of  the 
Union. 

This  region,  in  that  day,  was  a  sort  of  No  Man's 
Land.  It  was  vaguely  included  in  the  Virginia 
grant,  it  was  claimed  by  the  Spaniards  as  a  part 
of  Florida.  A  hundred  years  before,  in  1562,  Jean 
Ribaut  had  planted  a  colony  of  Huguenots  at  Port 
Royal,  where  he  built  a  fort,  and  had  been  treacher 
ously  murdered  by  the  Adelantado  Menendez,  who, 
in  a  pious  frame  of  mind,  told  the  French  that  he 
was  there  "to  plant  the  Holy  Gospel,  that  the 
Indians  may  be  enlightened  and  come  to  the  know 
ledge  of  the  Holy  Catholic  faith  of  our  Lord  Jesus 
Christ,  as  the  Roman  Church  teaches  it."  And  so 
when  Ribaut  fell  into  his  hands  after  promise  of 
safe  conduct,  "I,"  Menendez  writes,  "caused  Juan 
Ribao  with  all  the  rest  to  be  put  to  the  knife,  judging 
this  to  be  necessary  for  the  service  of  God  our 
Lord  and  of  your  Majesty."  2  And  for  a  hundred 
years  the  Spanish  asserted  their  claim  and  nothing 
was  done  to  dispute  it  until  Charles  II  granted  the 
territory  to  eight  proprietors,  for  whom  John  Locke 
drew  up  "the  Grand  Model,"  a  remarkable  and 

1  Lodge:  Short  History  of  the  English  Colonies,  p.  134. 

3  Parkman:  Pioneers  of  France  in  the  New  World,  pp.  136,  144. 


308          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

fantastic  constitution  that  was  unworkable  and  was 
never  put  into  effect. 

The  territory  granted  to  the  Duke  of  Albemarle 
and  his  associates  occupied  a  position  of  peculiar 
importance  as  the  frontier  of  the  English  colonies 
in  America.  It  lay  between  Virginia,  then  the  most 
advanced  southerly  British  outpost  on  the  American 
continent,  and  the  Spanish  settlements.  It  was  not 
only  the  international  frontier  but  it  served  also, 
as  Fiske  points  out,  "for  some  time  as  a  kind  of 
backwoods  for  Virginia";  and  he  adds  that  "until 
recently  one  of  the  most  important  factors  in  Amer 
ican  history  has  been  the  existence  of  a  perpetually 
advancing  frontier,  where  new  territory  has  often 
to  be  won  by  hard  fighting  against  its  barbarian 
occupants,  where  the  life  has  been  at  once  more 
romantic  and  more  sordid  than  on  the  civilized 
seaboard,  and  where  democracy  has  assumed  its 
most  distinctly  American  features."  How  great 
this  influence  of  the  land  beyond  has  exercised 
upon  the  development  of  the  American  character 
and  American  institutions,  we  shall  see  more  clearly 
when  we  come  to  study  the  great  migration  that 
swept  from  the  East  to  the  West  to  populate  the 
plains  and  build  great  cities,  and  the  flood  that 
rolled  up  from  the  South  and  fructified  that  vast 
region  over  which  the  Indian  roamed  and  the 
buffalo  grazed,  but  for  the  present  we  merely  men 
tion  it  as  one  of  the  factors  in  race  development; 
for  in  almost  three  centuries  of  American  existence 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        309 

there  was  never  a  time  that  a  frontier  was  not  to 
be  conquered,  and  virgin  soil  to  be  broken,  and 
civilization  to  be  planted. 

With  the  early  efforts  at  settlement  and  the  his 
tory  of  Carolina  until  it  was  divided  into  two  pro 
vinces,  there  is  little  need  to  concern  ourselves.  To 
attract  settlers  to  North  Carolina  a  law  was  passed 
exempting  them  from  the  payment  of  taxes  for  one 
year,  all  debts  contracted  outside  the  province  ipso 
facto  outlawed,  and  no  person  could  be  sued  for 
five  years  for  any  cause  of  action  that  might  have 
arisen  outside  of  the  colony.  North  Carolina,  or 
Albemarle,  as  it  was  then  known,  under  these  bene 
ficent  laws  attracted  the  worthless,  the  improvident 
and  the  dishonest,  and  Virginia,  resenting  an  Alsatia 
planted  at  its  doors,  contemptuously  termed  the 
new  settlement  "Rogue's  Harbor."  Naturally  the 
worst  element  in  all  the  colonies  found  shelter  here. 
The  men,  we  are  told,  were  lazy  and  made  their 
wives  work  for  them.  If  the  weather  was  cold, 
"they  lie  and  snore  till  the  sun  had  run  one  third 
of  its  course  and  dispersed  all  the  unwholesome 
damps,"  and  the  low,  alluvial  land  was  the  breeding 
ground  for  malaria.  In  mild  weather  "they  stand 
leaning  with  both  their  arms  upon  the  cornfield 
fence,  and  gravely  consider  whether  they  had  best 
go  and  take  a  little  heat  at  the  hoe,  but  generally 
find  reasons  to  put  it  off  until  another  time."  * 

In  1677,  only  thirteen  years  after  the  first  gov- 

1  Byrd  MSS.,  pp.  75-76. 


310          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ernor  of  Albemarle  had  been  appointed  by  Sir 
William  Berkeley,  the  governor  of  Virginia,  and  one 
of  the  eight  lords  proprietors  of  the  new  province, 
as  usual  in  an  English  colony  in  America,  trouble 
broke  out  between  the  colonists  and  their  govern 
ment.  That  mischievous  Navigation  Act,  which  had 
been  the  exciting  cause  of  Bacon's  rebellion  in  Vir 
ginia,  and  Bacon  at  that  time  had  looked  to  Albe 
marle  to  furnish  him  assistance  to  defy  the  power 
of  the  Crown,  was  to  drive  the  Carolinians  to  open 
rebellion.  A  lucrative  trade  was  carried  on  between 
the  settlers  on  Albemarle  Sound  and  the  New 
Englanders,  and  their  vessels  were  constantly  cross 
ing  the  short  stretch  of  blue  water  to  the  West 
Indies,  where  they  exchanged  Virginia  tobacco  and 
cattle  and  lumber  for  rum  and  molasses  and  sugar, 
which  could  be  sold  in  Europe  for  a  round  profit. 
It  was  profitable  for  every  one  concerned  except  the 
lords  proprietors,  who  gained  nothing  by  it,  and  as 
the  colony  existed  for  the  enrichment  of  the  men 
who  owned  it,  according  to  the  economic  philosophy 
of  the  day,  attempts  were  made  to  break  up  what 
was  regarded  as  an  illicit  trade  and  divert  it  into 
its  legitimate  channels.  At  the  end  of  the  year  1677, 
a  vessel  arrived  from  the  North  with  a  cargo  of  rum 
and  molasses,  but  as  soon  as  her  skipper  landed  he 
was  arrested  by  the  governor  and  held  in  £1,000 
bail  for  a  violation  of  the  Navigation  Act.  Cul- 
peper,  a  turbulent  spirit,  incited  the  mob  to  resist 
the  governor,  who,  together  with  the  council,  were 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        311 

seized  and  locked  up,  and  Culpeper  proclaimed 
governor,  new  justices  appointed,  and  a  de  facto 
government  set  up,  which  existed  for  two  years. 

There  was  constant  turmoil  for  many  years. 
Attempts  on  the  part  of  governors  to  establish  the 
Church  of  England  were  stoutly  resisted  by  the 
Dissenters;  but  Englishmen  of  all  creeds  made 
common  cause  in  attempting  to  exclude  the  Hugue 
nots  from  the  franchise.  The  Indians,  a  treacher 
ous  and  vindictive  foe,  were  encouraged  by  the 
Spaniards  to  regard  the  English  as  their  natural 
enemies.  North  Carolina  marks  the  beginning  of 
that  important  Scotch  immigration  which  has  left 
such  a  marked  impress  upon  America;  and  there 
came  also  Germans  from  the  Rhine  provinces. 
The  older  colonies  were  colonized  by  Englishmen, 
and  the  first  work  of  settlement  was  done  and  the 
government  established  without  the  assistance  of 
men  alien  to  their  race.  The  younger  colonies  gave 
welcome  to  Germans  and  French  and  Scotch  and 
Irish,  and  from  that  time  the  foreign  element  has 
never  ceased  to  flow  in  a  steady  stream  across  the 
Atlantic. 

North  Carolina  demands  very  little  more  atten 
tion  at  our  hands.  During  the  proprietary  period 
the  people  clung  to  the  coast  and  were  behind  the 
other  colonies  in  their  civilization.  "Of  all  the 
thirteen  colonies  North  Carolina  was  the  least 
commercial,  the  most  provincial,  the  farthest  re 
moved  from  European  influences,  and  its  wild 


312          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

forest  life  the  most  unrestrained.  Every  colony  had 
its  frontier,  its  borderland  between  civilization  and 
savagery;  but  North  Carolina  was  composed  en 
tirely  of  frontier.  The  people  were  impatient  of 
legal  restraints  and  averse  to  paying  taxes;  but 
their  moral  and  religious  standard  was  not  below 
that  of  the  other  colonies.  The  freedom  was  the 
freedom  of  the  Indians,  or  the  wild  animal,  not  that 
of  the  criminal  and  the  outlaw.  Here  truly  was  life 
in  the  primeval  forest,  at  the  core  of  nature's  heart. 
There  were  no  cities,  scarcely  villages.  The  people 
were  farmers  or  woodsmen,  they  lived  apart, 
scattered  through  the  wilderness;  their  highways 
were  the  rivers  and  bays,  and  their  homes  were  con 
nected  by  narrow  trails  winding  among  the  trees. 
Yet  the  people  were  happy  in  their  freedom  and 
contented  with  their  lonely  isolation."  *  We  may 
question  the  assertion  that  their  moral  and  religious 
standard  was  not  below  that  of  other  colonies,  and 
regard  the  conclusion  of  another  writer  as  more 
nearly  describing  their  condition :  "  North  Carolina, 
the  poorest,  most  backward,  and  ignorant  of  all  the 
colonies,  was  virtually  a  community  of  small  pro 
prietors  living  squalidly  on  the  products  of  their 
own  farms,  and  occasionally  exporting  their  surplus 
products,  pork,  cattle,  and  tar."  2 

It  was  characteristic  of  these  turbulent,  lawless 
people  that  they  should  not  only  have  taken  a 

1  Elson:  History  of  the  United  States,  p.  87. 
3  Cambridge  Modem  History,  vol.  vii,  p.  56. 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        313 

leading  part  in  the  Revolution  but  have  anticipated 
it.  On  May  31,  1775,  more  than  a  year  before  the 
adoption  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  the 
people  of  Mecklenburg  County  adopted  a  resolution 
declaring  that  British  authority  had  ceased,  and 
officers  were  chosen  to  act  independently  of  the 
Crown  and  Parliament.  An  attempt  has  been  made 
by  some  writers  to  prove  that  the  language  of  the 
Declaration  of  Independence  adopted  at  Philadel 
phia  was  virtually  a  paraphrase  of  the  Mecklenburg 
resolution,  but  the  weight  of  evidence  does  not  sus 
tain  this  ingenious  theory.  The  action  of  these  fiery 
Mecklenburgers  is  an  interesting  side  light,  but 
without  significance.  They  obtained  no  support 
from  the  rest  of  North  Carolina,  and  events  were 
neither  hastened  nor  retarded  by  their  defiance  of 
English  authority. 

South  Carolina  demands  closer  study  because  of 
the  great  part  it  played  in  all  that  has  gone  to  pro 
duce  American  development  and  the  influence  it 
has  exercised  on  political  and  social  institutions. 
About  the  time  that  "Rogue's  Harbor"  was  giving 
haven  to  its  derelicts  the  proprietors  of  the  Carolinas 
established  a  settlement  at  Cape  Fear,  a  hundred 
and  sixty  miles  south  of  Albemarle.  We  need  not 
again  refer  to  it.  The  settlement  disappeared  and 
became  merged  into  Charleston,  from  which  sprung 
South  Carolina.  With  the  purpose  of  building  up 
a  community  that  should  be  self-sustaining,  a  grant 
of  one  hundred  and  fifty  acres  was  given  to  every 


314          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

freeman  who  went  out  at  his  own  cost,  with  a  like 
amount  for  every  man  servant,  and  one  hundred 
acres  for  every  woman  servant  he  brought  with  him, 
and  at  the  expiration  of  their  terms  of  service  each 
servant  was  to  be  given  a  hundred  acres.  Able- 
bodied  men  willing  to  work,  but  without  money, 
were  supplied  with  food,  clothes,  and  tools.  Realiz 
ing  the  sturdy  character  of  the  New  Englander  and 
noting  how  he  had  prospered,  the  proprietors  at 
tempted  to  induce  immigration  from  the  North  and 
reproduce  the  social  conditions  existing  there  rather 
than  those  of  Virginia  and  Maryland.  Impressed 
with  the  economic  importance  of  a  colony  of  towns, 
they  did  everything  to  encourage  urban  life  and 
check  the  acquisition  of  great  estates.  Some  immi 
grants  were  attracted  from  New  England,  but  they 
left  little  mark  on  the  province,  and  recruiting  went 
on  actively  everywhere,  producing  a  very  mixed 
population  in  the  early  days.  Englishmen  came 
from  England  and  the  Bahamas  and  the  Barbadoes, 
Dutchmen  from  New  York,  Huguenots  from 
France,  Scotch  and  Irish  from  their  own  countries, 
Virginians  and  North  Carolinians  drifted  in.  In 
nationality  they  were  no  less  different  than  they 
were  in  temperament  and  condition,  but  America 
has  ever  been  the  crucible  to  fuse  the  elements  of 
race  and  amalgamate  them  into  nationality,  and 
what  took  place  in  South  Carolina  at  the  end  of 
the  seventeenth  century  foreshadowed  on  a  grander 
scale  a  more  important  movement  a  century  later. 


NEW   SOCIAL    CONDITIONS        315 

The  history  of  the  United  States  is  a  study  of  a 
people  always  in  flux.  In  the  early  days  there  was 
never  a  time  when  they  were  not  "emigrants." 
They  "emigrated"  from  Massachusetts  to  the  other 
New  England  colonies,  and  then  spread  to  New 
York;  from  Virginia  they  went  to  the  Carolinas  and 
further  south;  from  New  England  they  stretched  to 
the  middle  West;  from  the  South  they  bridged  the 
Mississippi.  In  the  first  century  of  their  existence 
there  was  a  reservoir  from  which  to  draw  the  supply 
to  nourish  a  soil  barren  of  people  and  only  needing 
men  to  make  it  fruitful;  later  when  the  drain  was 
too  heavy,  Europe  filled  up  the  reservoir  with  the 
stream  of  its  population.  Cavaliers  and  Puritans, 
Protestants  and  Catholics,  sturdy  adventurers  and 
shiftless  incompetents,  the  idle  and  the  industrious, 
the  sober  and  the  dissolute,  were  the  beginnings  of 
North  Carolina  who  came  across  land  and  sea, 
attracted  by  the  promise  of  gain  or  the  hope  of 
escape  from  undesirable  conditions. 

This  filling  up  of  North  Carolina  was  typical  of 
those  great  migratory  movements  that  have  always 
been  such  a  striking  and  interesting  phenomenon  of 
American  development.  It  was  the  same  impulse 
that  turned  the  tide  of  immigration  to  the  West  at 
the  time  of  the  great  gold  discoveries,  that  in  the 
West  drove  men  ever  a  little  nearer  to  the  setting  sun, 
because  there  was  still  an  undiscovered  country; 
that  to-day  is  the  lure  of  the  city  to  the  young  man 
on  the  farm,  and  with  siren  call  makes  men  abandon 


316          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

life  in  older  communities,  and  begin  life  anew  in 
mining  camps  and  settlements,  whose  future  is 
promise  and  where  chances  are  more  equal.  The 
nomadic  spirit  is  in  the  blood  of  Americans.  As  yet 
they  have  developed  no  passionate  attachment  to 
the  soil  or  the  birthplace  of  their  fathers.  To  them, 
to  the  majority,  no  sacred  associations  cling  to  the 
roof  tree,  for  to  the  American  home  is  wherever  he 
makes  it,  and  he  feels  that  the  time  has  not  yet 
come  when  he  can  plant  his  roots  deep  in  the  soil, 
and  see  a  sturdy  forest  spring  from  his  own  seed  and 
grow  up  around  him.  There  is  too  much  inter 
communication  between  all  parts  of  the  United 
States  for  any  one  section  to  live  apart  from  the 
other.  This  freedom  of  intercourse  leads  to  the 
daughters  marrying  and  going  to  the  homes  of  their 
husbands,  five  hundred  miles,  a  thousand  miles  or 
more  away;  and  the  wide  scattering  of  members  ©f 
a  family  is  regarded  as  a  matter  of  course.  No  man 
will  admit  failure,  it  is  only  the  absence  of  oppor 
tunity  that  prevents  his  rising,  and  if  opportunity  is 
not  at  hand  it  can  be  found  elsewhere.  The  New 
York  man  goes  to  California  and  the  Californian 
goes  to  New  York,  and  they  both  prosper,  which  is 
one  of  the  marvels  of  a  country  whose  social  institu 
tions  are  unlike  those  of  any  other  and  where  con 
ditions  are  different  from  those  elsewhere.1 

1  "We  are  apt  to  consider  New  England  as  preeminently  the  region  that 
people  go  from,  and  some  of  these  New  England  states  at  times  have  ap 
peared  to  be  scarcely  more  than  breeding-grounds  for  stalwart  men  and 
women  to  inhabit  and  build  up  other  parts  of  the  land.  Old  home  week  in 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        317 

Slavery  always  had  a  deeper  hold  and  exercised 
a  more  baneful  influence  in  South  Carolina  than  in 
any  other  colony  or  state,  and  to  obtain  cheap  servile 
labor  the  South  Carolinians  enslaved  the  native 
Indians.  This  brought  on  hostilities  between  the 
Indians  and  the  whites  that  lasted  for  many  years, 
and  the  Spaniards  of  St.  Augustine,  but  two  days' 
sail  from  the  English  frontier,  watched  the  growing 
spread  of  the  English  colonists  with  fear  and  jeal 
ousy.  Menendez,  who  preached  Christianity  at  the 
point  of  the  knife,  had  gone,  but  his  methods  sur 
vived,  and  in  1680  a  Scotch  colony  that  had  been 
planted  at  Port  Royal  by  Lord  Cardross  was  wiped 
out  of  existence.  The  colonists,  who  were  not  of 
the  kind  to  turn  the  other  cheek  and  take  punish 
ment  without  retaliating,  were  anxious  to  teach  the 
Spaniards  a  lesson,  but  they  were  prevented  by  the 
proprietors,  who  refused  to  sanction  the  dangerous 
doctrine  that  a  colony  could  make  war  on  a  sovereign 
power  without  the  consent  of  the  home  government. 
Soon  they  were  to  have  their  fill  of  fighting,  and  the 
time  was  fast  approaching  "when  the  battles  of  the 
great  European  powers  were  fought  out  on  the  banks 
of  the  Ohio  and  Lake  Erie,  and  when  the  war-cry 

Kentucky  reminds  one  how  true  it  is  that  an  intense  migratory  movement  has 
steadily  gone  on  in  the  middle  West  for  several  generations.  .  .  .  The  first 
settlers  of  the  West  and  Southwest,  or  their  children,  were  ever  on  the  move, 
pushing  onward  to  new  and,  if  possible,  more  fertile  lands.  In  later  times 
there  has  been  the  same  fluidity  of  population,  so  that  to-day,  it  is  said, 
Kentucky  has  600,000  of  her  children  dwelling  outside  of  her  borders.  And 
among  them  scores  of  men  who  have  distinguished  themselves  in  public  life 
of  sister  states."  —  Springfield  (Massachusetts)  Republican,  June  14,  1906. 


318          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

was  raised,  and  the  tomahawk  wielded  amid  peace 
ful  American  settlements  at  the  bidding  of  a  diplo 
mat  in  London  or  Madrid." 

It  would  be  wearisome  and  profitless  minutely 
to  trace  the  constant  bickering  and  quarrels  between 
the  colonists  and  their  governors  until  the  rule  of 
the  proprietors  ceased  and  the  Crown  assumed  con 
trol,  and  to  us  they  are  merely  interesting  as  showing 
that  in  South  Carolina,  as  everywhere  else  in  English 
America,  there  was  displayed  that  same  spirit  of 
independence,  that  same  determination  to  resist 
oppression,  that  same  resolution  to  uphold  rights 
and  liberties  that  the  Englishman  regarded  as  his 
inherently  and  not  vouchsafed  to  him  as  an  act  of 
grace  by  proprietor  or  king.  It  was  in  the  blood  of 
these  Englishmen  to  be  defiant,  and  by  this  time  we 
have  become  so  accustomed  to  their  defiance  taking 
the  usual  form  of  resistance  to  the  governor,  that  we 
should  be  surprised  if  South  Carolina  did  not  pre 
serve  the  tradition.  It  was  the  customary  dispute 
over  taxation,  the  colonists  proposing  to  raise  money 
to  resist  Spanish  invasion  by  taxing  British  imports ; 
and  when  the  governor  gave  orders  to  call  out  the 
militia  to  do  in  Charleston  what  Cromwell  had  done 
in  Westminster,  the  Assembly  threw  off  their  alle 
giance  to  the  proprietors  and  declared  themselves 
subject  only  to  the  authority  of  the  Crown.  Johnson, 
the  proprietary  governor,  was  deposed  and  Moore 
elected  in  his  place  as  the  king's  representative,  with 
out  shedding  blood.  When  two  British  men-of-war 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        319 

came  into  the  harbor  of  Charleston,  their  captains, 
yielding  to  Johnson's  request  for  assistance,  sent 
their  crews  to  quarters  and  trained  their  guns  on 
the  city,  but  the  rebels  had  possession  of  the  forts 
guarding  the  harbor,  and  threatened  shot  for  shot. 
The  time  had  not  come  for  Englishmen  to  engage 
in  fratricidal  strife,  there  was  no  firing  from  the 
ships,  and  the  proprietary  charter  was  soon  after 
wards  forfeited.  This  happened  in  1719.  Fifty- 
seven  years  later  there  was  another  revolution,  but 
on  a  larger  scale,  which  was  also  brought  about  by 
differences  regarding  taxation  and  in  which  South 
Carolina  took  a  prominent  part.  Another  fifty-six 
years  elapse  and  South  Carolina  maintains  the 
doctrine  of  nullification  —  the  right  of  a  state  to 
resist  the  payment  of  tariff  duties  because  they  are 
considered  unjust  and  burdensome  —  and  threatens 
secession;  and  in  another  thirty  years  she  puts  the 
threat  into  execution  and  leads  the  procession  of  the 
seceding  Southern  States.  The  effect  of  early  influ 
ences  on  the  character  of  a  people  is  nowhere  more 
typically  exemplified  than  in  the  political  and  social 
history  of  South  Carolina. 

To  us,  now,  these  years  of  friction  between  the 
people  and  the  government,  like  the  angry  disputes 
over  church  matters,  seem  petty  and  almost  mean 
ingless  and  unworthy  of  men  who  were  engaged  in 
that  stupendous  task  of  solidly  laying  the  foundation 
of  an  imperial  empire  and  giving  birth  to  a  nation; 
whose  lives  were  a  constant  struggle  against  savage 


320          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

foes,  who  had  to  tame  the  wilderness  and  bring 
barren  places  under  cultivation  and  build  cities; 
but  they  were  not  without  results.  They  made  for 
character,  not  the  finest  or  highest  type,  it  is  true, 
but  a  certain  strength  was  necessary  at  a  time 
when  rude  strength  was  essential  to  future  devel 
opment.  These  quarrels  taught  the  great  truth  that 
constitutions  are  made  for  men  and  not  men  for 
constitutions,  and  that  when  men  have  outgrown 
their  constitutions,  there  is  a  way  to  discard  that 
which  is  no  longer  useful  and  still  retain  the  essence 
and  spirit  of  that  which  is  vital. 

In  everything  that  happened  in  America  from  the 
time  when  the  first  settlers  landed  in  Jamestown 
until  the  warning  cry  rang  out  in  the  stillness  of 
that  April  night  and  the  belfry's  beacon  light  called 
a  nation  into  arms,  there  is  nakedly  revealed  the  one 
great  weakness  of  English  rule.  No  English  states 
man  was  able  to  grasp  the  obvious  truth  that  the 
colonies  had  outgrown  their  institutions  and  were 
simply  keeping  pace  with  their  development.  Pro 
prietors  in  the  beginning,  and  the  Crown  and  its 
ministers  later,  gave  to  these  men  a  set  of  rules  under 
the  name  of  charters  and  constitutions  that  were 
supposed  to  be  sufficient  and  needed  neither  en 
largement  nor  modification.  They  made  no  pro 
vision  for  expansion,  they  made  no  allowance  for 
that  physical  and  spiritual  growth  that  was  inevit 
able  if  the  colonies  were  to  live,  and  could  only  fail 
to  reveal  itself  if  the  colonists  remained  mere  bands 


NEW  SOCIAL  CONDITIONS        321 

of  struggling  settlers  unable  to  stand  on  their  own 
feet  and  always  looking  to  the  mother  country  for 
support.  But  they  became  quickly  self-sustaining, 
and  developed  that  peculiarly  self-reliant  temper 
which  is  a  part  of  the  American  inheritance;  the 
indifference  and  carelessness  of  proprietors  and 
ministers  allowed  them  little  by  little  to  claim  a  still 
greater  control  of  their  own  affairs,  which  stimulated 
them  to  demand  even  more,  and  finally  welded  the 
colonists  into  a  cohesive  mass  whose  aims  and  pur 
poses  were  antagonistic  to  those  of  their  rulers.  Such 
a  training  can  have  only  one  ending.  The  strain 
becomes  greater  year  by  year,  but  goes  on  until  the 
tension  becomes  too  great  and  the  system  breaks 
down.1 

Virginia  was  influenced  politically  and  materially 
—  and  the  material  conditions  of  a  country  are 
always  reflected  in  the  moral  and  psychological 
attitude  of  its  people  —  by  tobacco ;  South  Carolina 
was  influenced  in  the  same  way  by  its  two  great 
staples, indigo  and  rice;  the  former,  however,  having 
only  a  brief  life  and  giving  place  to  cotton,  which 
has  had  the  widest  effect  on  the  lives  and  character 

1  Since  the  above  was  written,  the  second  volume  of  Channing's  History 
of  the  United  States  has  appeared,  and  the  view  so  freely  expressed  by  this 
writer  that  the  revolution  of  1776  had  long  been  smouldering  is  sustained  by 
that  eminent  American  authority.  "In  recent  years,"  he  says,  "English 
writers  have  united  in  objurgating  George  III  and  the  stupid,  ignorant  poli 
ticians  who  guided  England's  affairs  in  the  fifteen  years  before  1775 ;  on  their 
shoulders  have  been  laid  the  faults  which  brought  about  the  American  revo 
lution;  but  the  causes  of  that  cataclysm  lie  further  back  and  maybe  largely 
found  in  the  settlement  of  the  imperial  constitution  in  the  years  immediately 
following  William's  accession  to  power."  —  Vol.  ii,  p.  219. 


322          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  its  cultivators.  Rice,  in  a  wild  state,  has  always 
been  found  in  South  Carolina,  but  cultivated  rice  was 
introduced  into  the  colony  by  accident,  when  a  ship 
from  Madagascar  brought  a  bag  of  rice  to  Charles 
ton  in  1693  and  it  was  planted  experimentally.  It 
was  found  that  the  swamps  of  the  colony  were  pecul 
iarly  suitable  for  its  propagation,  and  it  was  soon 
cultivated  on  a  large  and  profitable  scale  and  gave 
to  the  South  Carolinians  the  same  solid  foundation 
for  wealth  that  tobacco  had  given  to  the  Virginians, 
but  with  far  more  disastrous  physical  and  moral 
results.  The  cultivation  of  tobacco  is  not  more  phys 
ically  exhausting  than  any  other  kind  of  farming  in 
healthy  surroundings,  but  rice  must  be  grown  in 
swamps  and  marshy  lands  under  tropical  heat, 
which  is  fatal  to  the  white  man ;  and  the  same  condi 
tions  govern  the  growing  of  indigo.  In  those  days 
rice  culture  was  to  other  agriculture  what  the 
sweated  industries  of  to-day  are  to  manufacturing 
carried  on  more  scientifically ;  but  the  toll  in  human 
life  that  the  sweatshop  pays  does  not  stand  in  the 
way  of  its  existence,  and  as  misery  and  want  drive 
workers  into  the  sweatshop  and  society  connives  at 
the  sacrifice,  so  force  and  cunning  found  labor  for 
the  deadly  rice-fields.  White  men  were  unable  to 
work  there,  but  the  negro  and  Indian  could,  and 
were  regarded  by  the  proprietor  simply  as  so  much 
machinery,  which,  having  converted  a  certain 
amount  of  raw  material  into  the  finished  product, 
is  worn  out  in  the  operation  and  must  be  replaced. 


NEW   SOCIAL   CONDITIONS        323 

Negroes  were  imported  in  such  large  quantities  that 
every  year  each  man  could  raise  enough  indigo  or 
rice  more  than  to  repay  the  cost  of  his  purchase; 
so  that  it  was  cheaper  for  the  South  Carolina  pro 
prietor  to  work  his  slaves  to  death  than  to  take  care 
of  them  or  to  replenish  the  stock  by  breeding. 
"Assuming,  then,  that  human  nature  in  South 
Carolina  was  neither  better  nor  worse  than  in  other 
parts  of  the  civilized  world,  we  need  not  be  sur 
prised  when  told  that  the  relations  between  master 
and  slave  were  noticeably  different  from  what  they 
were  in  Virginia,  Maryland,  and  North  Carolina. 
The  negroes  of  the  southern  colony  were  reputed  to 
be  more  brutal  and  unmanageable  than  those  to 
the  northward."  l  In  the  northern  colonies  slaves 
had  been  softened  by  contact  with  civilization  and 
were,  as  a  rule,  properly  fed  and  housed  and  treated 
without  undue  harshness;  it  was  as  much  to  the 
advantage  of  the  slaveholder,  whose  wealth  was  in 
slaves,  to  keep  them  in  condition  so  as  to  get  the 
greatest  profit  from  their  labor  and  their  breeding, 
as  it  was  properly  to  care  for  his  stock.  But  in 
South  Carolina  no  such  considerations  prevailed, 
and  the  slaves  were  usually  brought  direct  from  the 
savage  wilds  of  Africa  to  fall  under  the  lash  of  the 
overseer  in  the  rice-fields. 

The  effect  of  slavery  was  more  demoralizing  in 
South  Carolina  than  in  any  other  colony.    In  Vir- 

1  Fiske:  Old  Virginia  and  Her  Neighbours,  vol.  ii,  p.  327.    Cf.  Bruce: 
Economic  History  of  Virginia,  vol.  ii,  p.  108. 


324          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ginia  and  Maryland,  great  as  the  evils  of  slavery 
were  in  degrading  free  white  labor,  there  was  still 
room  for  the  white  indented  servant  and  the  free 
man,  but  in  South  Carolina  that  was  impossible, 
and  it  was  a  colony  not  of  white  men  using  the 
labor  of  slaves,  but  a  colony  of  slaves  with  a  few 
white  masters.  In  1760,  of  the  total  population  of 
150,000  three  quarters  were  said  to  be  slaves,  while 
in  the  adjoining  colony  of  North  Carolina  there  were 
only  50,000  slaves  in  a  population  of  200,000.  In 
Virginia  and  Maryland  the  proprietors  lived  on 
their  plantations  surrounded  by  their  slaves,  and 
the  life  was  both  patriarchal  and  feudal;  in  South 
Carolina  it  was  seldom  that  a  rice  planter  lived  on 
his  estate,  and  he  gravitated  naturally  to  Charleston, 
which  occupied  the  same  relation  to  the  colony  as 
London  did  to  the  rest  of  England.  In  Virginia 
and  Maryland  the  planter  had  little  fear  from  his 
slaves,  but  in  South  Carolina  that  dread  was  never 
absent;  the  planter  always  went  armed  (to  that  we 
can  doubtless  trace  the  demoralizing  modern  cus 
tom  of  the  Southern  man  carrying  a  pistol  and  the 
freedom  with  which  he  uses  it  on  the  slightest 
provocation);  and  the  slave  insurrection  of  South 
Carolina  of  1740  is  a  part  of  its  early  history. 

Because  most  of  the  landed  proprietors  of  South 
Carolina  lived  in  Charleston,  that  city  naturally  be 
came  the  centre  of  the  life  of  the  colony  and  ab 
sorbed  not  only  its  wealth  and  fashion,  but  also  its 
commercial  activity.  Virginia,  as  we  have  seen,  was 


NEW   SOCIAL    CONDITIONS        325 

a  colony  of  estates  and  not  of  cities  or  towns ;  Mary 
land  life  at  first  centred  in  Annapolis,  and  Balti 
more  became  the  commercial  metropolis;  but  in 
South  Carolina  Charleston  combined  the  two.  This 
circumstance  made  life  there  more  cosmopolitan 
than  in  any  other  city  in  any  of  the  southern  col 
onies  of  the  day,  and  as  South  Carolina  had  a  large 
seaborne  trade  there  was  frequent  and  close  com 
munication  with  Europe.  The  isolation  of  North 
Carolina,  a  backwoods  settlement,  was  very  marked, 
and  the  freedom  of  intercourse  of  South  Carolina 
appears  all  the  more  striking  because  of  the  con 
trast  with  its  nearest  neighbor. 

From  the  point  of  view  of  English  colonial  policy 
of  that  time,  which  regarded  a  colony  as  simply  a 
producer  of  raw  material  and  a  consumer  of  Eng 
lish  finished  product,  which  was  for  the  advantage 
of  English  merchants  and  manufacturers,  South 
Carolina  was  an  ideal  possession.  There  were  no 
manufactures,  her  people  were  satisfied  with  the 
cultivation  of  the  soil,  and  it  brought  them  wealth 
and  contentment. 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

AN   EXPERIMENT   THAT   FAILED 

IN  the  history  of  the  United  States  there  is  no  chap 
ter  invested  with  such  romantic  interest  as  that 
of  the  founding  of  Georgia,  the  last  of  the  English 
Colonies.  Neither  Massachusetts  and  its  Puritan 
theocracy;  nor  Rhode  Island,  a  monument  to  the 
liberality  of  Roger  Williams;  nor  Maryland,  where 
Catholics  practiced  tolerance  and  were  persecuted; 
nor  Pennsylvania,  where  Quakers  found  a  home, 
is  comparable  to  Georgia,  established  to  afford  a 
refuge  for  unfortunates,  with  aims  so  lofty  and  pur 
poses  so  ideal  that  it  is  a  remarkable  and  unique 
episode  in  the  march  of  civilization;  and  it  was 
typical  of  that  idealistic  spirit  in  the  Americans  that 
made  them  for  so  many  years,  and  until  self-pre 
servation  caused  more  prudent  considerations  to 
prevail,  to  regard  America  as  a  haven  for  the  dis 
tressed.  It  failed  to  accomplish  the  hopes  of  its  pro 
moters,  but  the  experiment  was  worth  making.  Few 
people  remember  this  early  phase  of  Georgia;  the 
strife  of  religions,  the  ambitions  of  politicians,  the 
folly  of  rulers,  are  all  too  well  remembered;  but 
the  efforts  made  in  behalf  of  humanity,  on  a  scale 
never  before  or  since  equaled,  have  been  forgotten. 
A  lad  of  good  family,  James  Oglethorpe  had  been 


AN  EXPERIMENT  THAT  FAILED    327 

one  of  Marl  borough's  subalterns  in  his  campaigns 
in  the  Low  Countries;  he  had  fought  under  Peter 
borough  in  Italy  and  with  Prince  Eugene  against 
the  Turk.  Handsome,  dashing,  with  a  manner  that 
made  him  popular  with  men,  and  women  found 
captivating;  full  of  courage  and  high  spirits  but 
with  excellent  control  of  himself,  he  was  a  romantic 
and  fascinating  figure.  Boswell  tells  a  pretty  story 
showing  his  spirit  and  quick  wit.  When  he  was  only 
nineteen  years  old  he  dined  one  day  with  the  Prince 
of  Wurtemberg,  who  insolently  flipped  a  few  drops 
of  wine  in  his  face.  Oglethorpe  dare  not  submit  to 
the  insult  without  protest,  for  that  would  have 
betokened  him  a  coward;  and  to  have  hotly  re 
sented  it  might  have  given  him  a  reputation  of 
turning  a  pleasantry  into  a  quarrel.  Looking  the 
prince  squarely  in  the  face,  and  with  the  easy  man 
ner  of  a  man  amused,  he  said :  "  That 's  a  good  joke, 
but  we  do  it  much  better  in  England,"  and  he  flung 
a  full  glass  of  wine  in  the  astonished  prince's  face. 
There  was  consternation  for  a  moment,  but  an  old 
general  who  was  one  of  the  guests  at  the  table  said, 
"II  a  bien  fait,  mon  prince,  vous  I'avez  commence"; 
and  "  thus  all  ended  in  good  humor,"  Boswell  com 
ments  in  relating  the  incident. 

In  1717  Sir  Robert  Montgomery  attempted  to 
establish  a  colony  in  what  is  now  known  as  Georgia, 
which  lay  between  the  English  colony  of  North 
Carolina  and  the  Spanish  possessions  of  Florida. 
Sir  Robert  was  a  man  of  luxuriant  imagination. 


328          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

In  his  advertisement  for  settlers  he  described  in 
glowing  terms  this  wonderful  country.  "Nature 
has  not  blessed  the  world  with  any  tract  which  can 
be  preferable  to  it.  Paradise  with  all  her  virgin 
beauties  may  be  modestly  supposed,  at  most,  but 
equal  to  its  native  excellencies."  But  even  an 
earthly  paradise  could  not  attract  immigrants,  and 
three  years  later  the  attempt  was  abandoned. 

Oglethorpe  was  now  in  England,  a  familiar  figure 
at  court  and  at  Westminster,  where  he  had  been 
elected  to  Parliament.  He  became  interested  in 
that  barbarous  system  by  which  imprisonment  for 
debt  was  sanctioned,  and  he  was  made  a  member 
of  a  parliamentary  commission  to  investigate  the 
debtor  prisons.  Profoundly  moved  by  the  horror 
of  imprisonment  for  debt  and  a  legal  system  which 
made  misfortune  a  crime,  he  petitioned  the  privy 
council  for  a  grant  of  land  lying  between  the 
Savannah  and  Altamaha  rivers,  on  which  he  pro 
posed  to  establish  a  colony  for  the  indigent 
and  insolvent  who  were  willing  to  make  a  new  start 
in  life. 

The  scheme  was  hailed  with  extraordinary  en 
thusiasm.  Oglethorpe  was  inspired  by  his  love  of 
humanity  and  his  desire  to  extend  a  helping  hand 
to  his  fellowmen  who  had  stumbled;  but  his  asso 
ciates  in  the  enterprise  saw  an  opportunity  to 
capitalize  charity  and  make  it  yield  handsome 
dividends.  The  same  spirit  that  had  moved  the 
early  Spanish  discoverers,  that  had  animated  the 


AN  EXPERIMENT  THAT  FAILED   329 

first  English  adventurers,  was  now  again  to  mani 
fest  itself,  and  the  copartnership  of  God  and  Mam 
mon  was  once  more  entered  into.  The  indigent  and 
the  insolvent  were  to  be  placed  on  their  feet,  which 
was  a  pious  work;  but  the  colonization  of  Georgia 
by  Englishmen  would  create  a  strong  military  out 
post  between  the  English  and  Spanish  possessions, 
and  it  was  obvious  to  English  statesmen  that  Spain 
was  a  menace  to  the  English  colonies  in  the  South 
and  must  be  kept  in  check.  And  in  addition,  the 
new  colony  could  be  made  profitable  and  swell 
the  commerce  of  England,  which  was  the  ambition 
of  every  Englishman.  Montgomery's  alluring  pic 
ture  of  Georgia  (so  named  after  George  II,  who 
granted  the  charter)  was  accepted  as  truthful  by 
Englishmen,  to  whom  New  England  was  a  place  of 
snow  and  ice  and  the  South  a  land  of  perpetual  sun 
shine.  Georgia  was  to  be  the  great  storehouse  from 
which  England  drew  her  raw  supplies.  Instead  of 
spending  five  hundred  thousand  pounds  a  year  for 
silk  woven  in  Italy  and  France,  Georgia  was  to 
raise  raw  silk  to  be  woven  by  English  weavers  in 
England,  thus  giving  employment  to  twenty  thou 
sand  people  in  Georgia  and  forty  thousand  in 
England.  Wine,  oil,  dyes,  drugs,  flax,  hemp,  and 
other  commodities  that  England  was  forced  to  pur 
chase  abroad  were  to  be  raised  in  the  English 
colony  of  Georgia.  Foreign  nations  were  no  longer 
to  grow  prosperous  at  the  expense  of  Englishmen, 
but  English  money  was  to  remain  in  England,  and 


330          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

English  workmen  were  not  to  be  reduced  to  starva 
tion  by  foreign  competition.  It  was  all  so  simple. 
The  prisons  and  poorhouses  of  England  were  filled 
with  debtors  and  paupers;  it  was  only  necessary 
to  transport  them  a  few  thousand  miles  across  the 
sea  and  poverty  would  be  replaced  by  riches  and 
the  despondent  would  become  strong  men  of  whom 
England  could  feel  proud. 

The  charter  was  granted  in  1732.  Money  was 
liberally  supplied,  the  scheme  having  the  powerful 
patronage  of  the  Church  as  well  as  society.  To 
those  self-sacrificing  clergymen  who  labored  without 
reward  in  noisome  prisons  and  among  the  poor 
whose  condition  was  so  deplorable,  this  seemed  at 
last  a  practical  way  to  relieve  suffering,  and  society 
was  dazzled  by  Oglethorpe's  enthusiasm  and  devo 
tion.  He  was  already  distinguished  as  a  soldier, 
he  had  mounted  the  first  rounds  of  a  parliamentary 
career;  in  every  drawing-room  there  were  women 
whose  eyes  took  on  a  new  light  when  he  approached ; 
life  lay  before  him  and  offered  whatever  honors  or 
pleasures  he  cared  to  take.  And  on  everything  he 
deliberately  turned  his  back  and  gave  up  that  which 
men  most  covet  to  suffer  the  hardships  of  an 
emigrant  ship  of  those  days  and  lead  his  little  band 
of  broken-down  men  to  a  new  life  in  the  wilderness 
where  the  Spaniard  threatened  and  the  Indian 
lurked  ever  alert  and  treacherous. 

The  charter  granted  to  Oglethorpe  and  his  asso 
ciates  was  unlike  that  of  any  other  colony.  Instead 


AN  EXPERIMENT  THAT  FAILED   331 

of  the  government,  to  which  by  that  time  the  people 
had  become  accustomed,  of  a  governor  and  council 
or  the  representative  of  the  proprietors  and  a  legisla 
ture  representing  the  people,  a  body  of  twenty-one 
trustees  was  created  whose  corporate  existence  was 
limited  to  twenty-one  years,  after  which  the  Crown 
would  determine  the  form  of  government  best 
suited  for  the  needs  of  the  colony.  The  trustees 
were  the  government  of  the  colony  and  were  given 
despotic  control,  but  the  charter  provided  that  the 
settlers  should  enjoy  the  liberties  of  free-born  British 
subjects.  Slave  labor  was  prohibited,  as  was  also 
the  importation  of  rum.  As  Georgia  was  intended 
to  be  a  military  outpost  against  the  Spaniards,  the 
presence  of  a  large  mass  of  slaves,  as  in  South  Caro 
lina,  was  considered  dangerous  to  the  military 
security  of  the  province. 

Early  in  1733,  Oglethorpe  reached  Charleston 
where  he  was  well  received,  for  the  South  Caro 
linians  were  only  too  glad  to  have  a  buffer  erected 
between  themselves  and  the  Spaniards.  On  the 
site  of  what  is  now  Savannah  the  first  settlement  was 
laid.  The  little  colony  at  once  went  to  work,  and 
Oglethorpe  took  his  share  of  the  labor,  assisting  in 
putting  up  the  houses  and  doing  his  turn  at  guard 
duty.  Fresh  settlers  arrived.  Parliament  made  a 
grant  of  c£10,000;  botanists  were  sent  by  private 
subscription  to  the  West  Indies  and  South  America 
to  find  plants  that  would  grow  in  the  fertile  soil  of 
Georgia.  If  ever  there  was  a  petted  colony  it  was 


332          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

this  refuge  for  the  unfortunate.    Highlanders  were 
brought   from  Scotland,  and  they  were  of   better 
texture  and  more  fitted  to  cope  with  the  hardships 
of  the  wilderness  than  the  spawn  of  the  jails  and  the 
poorhouses.    There  came  also  Protestants  from  the 
archbishopric  of  Bavaria  to  escape  the  persecutions 
of  its  primate,  who  attempted  to  convert  them  to 
the  Catholic  faith.    But  in  a  year  or  two  Oglethorpe 
and  the  trustees  discovered  what  since  then  philan 
thropists  have  repeatedly  found  to  their  sorrow, 
that  men  who  have  made  a  failure  of  life  seldom,  if 
ever,  reassert  qualities  of  success  after  they  have 
reached  a  certain  age.    There  is  always  a  chance  for 
the  young  man  to  make  a  new  start  under  more 
favorable  circumstances,  but  the  man  of  middle  age 
has  lost  his  power  of  initiative,  his  character  is  no 
longer  plastic,  and  the  pleasing  fiction  of  turning 
over  a  new  leaf  exists  in  imagination  only.    The 
debtors  and  paupers  were  not  regenerated  by  their 
passage   across    the   Atlantic,    and    they   were   as 
worthless  in  Georgia  as  they  had  been  in  England. 
But  a  danger  even  greater  than  the  worthlessness 
of  his  colonists  now  threatened  Oglethorpe.    The 
relations  between  England  and  Spain  were  daily 
becoming  more  strained,  and  the  activity  of  the 
Spanish  guardacostas  in  enforcing  the  laws  against 
smuggling,  and  the  contemptuous  fashion  in  which 
they  overhauled  and  searched  British  trading  vessels, 
excited  so  much  indignation  that  it  only  needed  a 
swashbuckling  mariner  with  an  eye  to  dramatic 


AN  EXPERIMENT  THAT  FAILED   333 

effect  to  fan  popular  fury  into  a  demand  for  re 
prisals.  Fate  is  always  ready  to  find  its  agents, 
whether  for  good  or  evil,  and  when  the  valorous 
Captain  Jenkins  brought  home  his  carefully  pre 
served  dissevered  ear  and  joyfully  exhibited  it  to 
his  countrymen,  daily  becoming  more  angry,  as 
proof  of  Spanish  brutality  and  the  indignities  to 
which  freeborn  Englishmen  were  subjected,  it  was 
enough,  and  the  war  of  Jenkins's  ear  resulted. 

Georgia  was  in  the  track  of  the  storm.  The 
Spaniards  were  in  a  position  of  strong  defense  at 
St.  Augustine,  and  from  Havana  they  could  easily 
summon  reinforcements  and  supplies.  Oglethorpe 
acted  with  his  usual  decision  and  perspicacity.  As 
soon  as  war  was  declared  he  called  on  the  neigh 
boring  colonies  for  assistance,  to  which  South 
Carolina  responded  with  money  and  North  Caro 
lina  and  Virginia  with  men  and  arms,  and  he 
attacked  and  captured  the  fort  at  Picolata  on  the 
St.  John's  River  and  then  moved  in  force  to  attack 
St.  Augustine,  but  the  place  was  too  heavily  fortified 
and  he  was  obliged  to  abandon  the  siege,  having 
suffered  considerable  loss  but  having  inflicted  a 
still  heavier  loss  upon  the  enemy.  For  the  next  two 
years  military  operations  on  land  practically  ceased, 
then  the  Spaniards  attempted  to  inflict  a  crushing 
blow.  A  great  fleet  was  fitted  out  at  Havana  and  an 
assault  made  on  the  forts  at  Frederica,  which  Ogle 
thorpe  repulsed  with  such  heavy  loss  that  the  enemy 
abandoned  the  attack.  The  following  year  the 


334          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

Spaniards  made  another  attempt,  but  Oglethorpe 
forced  their  hand  by  taking  the  offensive,  which  had 
no  result  except  to  disconcert  them.  This  ended  the 
war,  and  it  left  England  in  secure  possession  of 
Georgia  and  South  Carolina. 

While  Oglethorpe  was  repelling  the  Spaniards 
his  colony  was  not  prospering.  It  has  already  been 
said  that  the  trustees  prohibited  slavery,  although 
Oglethorpe  himself  owned  a  plantation  worked  by 
enslaved  negroes  in  South  Carolina;  but  the  pro 
hibition  was  based  on  economic  and  military  rea 
sons,  rather  than  on  the  ground  of  humanity.  Black 
labor  was  considered  unsuited  for  the  products  that 
Georgia  was  to  raise,  and  as  one  of  the  main  reasons 
for  creating  Georgia  was  to  throw  up  a  barrier 
between  South  Carolina  and  the  Spanish  posses 
sions,  the  presence  of  a  large  slave  population  easily 
to  be  corrupted  by  Spanish  emissaries  would  doubly 
have  endangered  the  security  of  the  colony.  In 
less  than  ten  years  after  the  first  settlers  landed 
they  began  to  clamor  for  the  right  to  bring  slaves 
into  the  colony,  and,  jealous  of  the  great  prosperity 
of  South  Carolina  and  their  own  seemingly  hopeless 
struggle,  they  contended  that  without  negroes  it 
would  be  impossible  for  the  colony  to  thrive.  The 
trustees  attempted  to  remain  true  to  themselves  and 
firmly  resisted  the  introduction  of  slavery,  but  at 
last  they  were  compelled  to  give  way,  and  fifteen 
years  after  Oglethorpe  had  led  his  first  band  of 
settlers  to  Georgia,  ships  were  discharging  their 


AN  EXPERIMENT  THAT  FAILED   335 

cargoes  of  black  chattels,  and  even  before  that 
slaves  had  been  smuggled  into  the  colony  from 
South  Carolina. 

Although  the  charter  of  the  trustees  was  to  run 
for  twenty-one  years,  they  surrendered  it  shortly 
before  it  expired  by  limitation.  The  great  scheme 
had  proved  a  failure.  Once  more  it  had  been  demon 
strated  that  men  are  not  made  by  coddling,  and  that 
states  as  well  as  character  are  only  wrought  out  by 
the  exercise  of  individual  expression  and  the  strug 
gle  that  brings  out  the  best  of  which  men  are  pos 
sessed.  The  silk  and  the  wine  and  the  olives  that 
were  to  make  Georgia  prosperous  and  England 
rich  had  not  been  grown,  nor  were  any  attempts 
made  to  raise  them.  The  Georgians  looked  over  to 
South  Carolina  and  saw  slaves  toiling  in  the  swamp 
lands  and  raising  indigo  and  rice,  which  made  their 
neighbors  rich,  while  they  were  struggling  with 
poverty;  and  they  wanted  slaves  so  that  they  might 
also  grow  rice  and  indigo  and  be  surrounded  by 
the  same  comfort.  The  alluring  vision  of  a  peaceful, 
happy,  contented  community  was  a  dream  that 
had  never  been  realized.  Of  all  the  English  colo 
nies  Georgia  was  the  most  discontented  and  the 
most  backward,  exceeding  even  North  Carolina 
in  this  respect.  In  Georgia,  as  in  all  the  Southern 
colonies  afflicted  with  the  curse  of  slavery,  there  was 
the  element  of  "  mean  whites  "  (the  Georgia  "  crack 
ers"  of  to-day  can  trace  their  descent  through 
an  unbroken  line  to  ancestors  who  were  among 


336          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

Oglethorpe's  first  settlers),  and  slavery  there  as 
everywhere  else  degraded  free  labor  and  encouraged 
thriftlessness  and  slack  habits.  There  was  much 
crime  and  lawlessness,  there  were  neither  schools 
nor  literature,  the  people  were  rude  and  uncouth, 
communication  was  difficult  because  the  roads  were 
mere  trails. 

When  the  Crown  took  over  the  charter  a  royal 
governor  was  appointed  and  a  form  of  government 
established  similar  to  those  in  the  other  provinces. 
Rice  and  indigo  worked  by  slaves  were  the  principal 
products  of  the  colony,  but  lumber  and  turpentine 
were  also  important  articles  of  commerce.  Down 
to  the  Revolution,  when  the  other  colonies  were 
highly  developed  and  had  given  birth  to  men  of 
the  widest  mental  attainments,  Georgia  was  still  a 
struggling,  backward,  illiterate  community. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

THE   FIRST   WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION 

WHILE  a  civilization  was  being  developed  in  the 
South,  the  northern  colonies,  laid  on  the  Pilgrim  and 
Puritan  foundation,  were  growing  apace  and  mak 
ing  progress  along  their  own  lines.  We  have  already 
seen  how  New  England  came  into  being,  and  it  is  not 
necessary  for  the  purpose  the  writer  has  in  view  to 
trace  minutely  the  growth  of  Massachusetts  during 
the  years  immediately  following,  but  some  attention 
must  be  paid  to  the  origin  of  the  other  New  England 
colonies,  to  complete  the  historical  perspective. 

The  rigid  theocracy  established  by  the  Puritan 
founders  of  Massachusetts  invited  to  resistance  men 
less  inclined  to  subordinate  earthly  rule  to  divine 
interpretation  or  who  were  more  liberal  in  their 
concept  of  life;  and  the  foundation  of  what  is  now 
the  state  of  Connecticut  has  a  twofold  interest  to 
the  student  of  early  American  development.  Con 
necticut,  or  as  it  first  appeared  in  American  history, 
the  settlement  of  Hartford,  was  the  protest  of 
dissidents  against  the  iron-clad  rule  of  the  theo 
cracy,  wiio  found  that  it  was  easier  to  abandon 
Massachusetts  and  carve  out  for  themselves  a 
new  home  in  the  wilderness  than  to  remain  and 
perpetually  be  at  war.  Connecticut  is  further 


338          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

interesting  to  us  because  it  was  the  beginning  of 
that  great  and  world-influencing  movement,  by 
which  the  parent  colony  casts  forth  a  shoot  which 
takes  root  and  flourishes  in  new  soil.  Before  this 
time  colonies  had  been  formed  by  conquest  or 
migration  from  the  mother  country,  but  now  we 
are  to  see  the  colony  sending  forth  her  own  pioneers 
to  extend  the  frontier  and  increase  her  strength. 

Theocratic  tyranny  soon  bred  its  discontent.  As 
early  as  1633  Thomas  Hooker,  a  clergyman  in 
charge  of  a  congregation  at  Newton,  a  man  of  learn 
ing  and  eloquence,  much  more  tolerant  than  the 
majority  of  the  Puritan  ministers,  with  far  less 
pugnacity  and  hair-splitting  narrowness,  and  a 
belief  in  democracy  rather  than  the  autocratic  rule 
of  the  church,  to  whom  the  divine  right  of  self- 
ordained  governors  was  no  less  repugnant  than  that 
of  kings,  began  to  agitate  resistance  to  the  ecclesi 
astical  oligarchy  then  in  control  in  Massachusetts; 
and  he  found  zealous  supporters  not  only  in  his 
own  congregation,  but  also  in  the  neighboring  towns 
of  Watertown  and  Dorchester. 

The  idea  of  democracy  at  that  time,  as  a  philo 
sophic  principle,  was  very  foreign  to  the  ideas  of 
the  men  whose  descendants  were  to  establish  it  as 
an  enduring  form  of  government;  Winthrop  had 
such  a  poor  opinion  of  power  entrusted  to  the  people 
that  to  him  democracy  was  "amongst  most  civil 
nations  accounted  the  meanest  and  worst  of  all 
forms  of  government,"  and  he  found  historical 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  339 

warrant  for  believing  "that  it  hath  always  been  of 
least  continuance  and  fullest  of  trouble";  John 
Cotton,  that  "thundering  preacher,"  voiced  what 
was  generally  believed  when  he  said,  "Democracy 
I  do  not  conceive  that  God  did  ordain  as  a  fit 
government  either  for  church  or  commonwealth." 
The  theocracy  had  a  quick  and  ready  means  for 
overcoming  resistance  to  authority  and  banished 
those  who  challenged  its  rule.  It  is  probable  that 
would  have  been  the  fate  of  Hooker  and  his  asso 
ciates  had  they  not  forestalled  action  by  voluntarily 
emigrating.  Accordingly,  the  people  of  the  three 
towTis,  the  able-bodied,  the  old,  and  the  little  chil 
dren,  with  their  cattle  and  their  household  goods, 
left  Massachusetts  and  turned  their  faces  to  the 
south,  where  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut  River 
they  founded  the  three  towns  of  Hartford,  Windsor, 
and  Wethersfield,  Hartford  being  the  most  impor 
tant  and  occupying  in  a  sense  the  relation  of  the 
seat  of  the  central  government  to  the  allied  towns. 
At  first  these  towns,  which  Massachusetts  regarded 
as  one  of  her  outposts,  were  governed  by  Massachu 
setts  through  a  board  of  commissioners,  but  that 
extraordinary  craving  for  self-government,  which  is 
written  on  every  page  of  American  history  from  the 
landing  at  Jamestown  to  the  present  day,  made 
these  Massachusetts  emigrants  determined  to  be 
their  own  rulers,  and  the  towns  elected  representa 
tives  to  a  General  Court  at  Hartford,  which  became 
the  mother  town  of  the  new  colony  and  was  the 


340          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

beginning  of  Connecticut  as  separate  and  apart 
from  Massachusetts. 

On  May  31,  1638,  Hooker  preached  a  sermon  of 
great  eloquence  and  power,  that  age  has  not  dimmed 
nor  time  robbed  of  its  remarkable  conception  of  the 
philosophy  of  democracy;  which  foreshadowed  by 
138  years  the  great  basic  truths  of  the  Declaration 
of  Independence.  :<The  foundation  of  authority," 
Hooker  declared,  "is  laid  in  the  free  consent  of  the 
people."  "  Governments  are  instituted  among  men 
deriving  their  powers  from  the  consent  of  the  gov 
erned,"  the  authors  of  the  Declaration  of  Indepen 
dence  wrote.  "The  choice  of  public  magistrates 
belongs  unto  the  people,  by  God's  own  allowance," 
Hooker  said,  and  "  they  who  have  power  to  appoint 
officers  and  magistrates,  it  is  in  their  power,  also,  to 
set  the  bounds  and  limitations  of  the  power  and 
place  unto  which  they  call  them."  The  Declaration 
of  Independence  indicted  the  king  for  having 
"obstructed  the  Administration  of  Justice,  by 
refusing  his  Assent  to  Laws  for  establishing  Judi 
ciary  Powers.  He  has  made  Judges  depend  upon 
his  will  alone,  for  the  tenure  of  their  offices,  and  the 
amount  and  payment  of  their  salaries." 

In  the  following  January  a  written  constitution 
was  adopted,  which  too  many  American  writers 
have  treated  as  an  incident  instead  of  recognizing 
that  it  was  an  epochal  event  momentous  in  the 
progress  of  mankind.  It  was  the  first  civil  code 
reduced  to  writing  adopted  on  American  soil;  it 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  341 

was  the  only  written  constitution  then  in  existence 
that  organized  a  form  of  civil  government.  Magna 
Charta  was  a  compact  between  sovereign  and 
people  guaranteeing  them  certain  liberties,  but 
the  constitution  adopted  in  that  little  frame  house 
on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut  went  much  further 
than  the  compact  that  the  barons  wrested  from 
John  at  Runnymede.  Just  as  Hooker's  sermon 
foreshadowed  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  so 
his  charter,  for  he  was  undoubtedly  the  moving 
spirit  in  its  formation  and  phraseology,  was  the 
prototype  of  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

The  Connecticut  constitution  created,  by  the  fed 
eration  of  the  independent  towns,  an  independent 
republic  that  contained  no  reference  to  any  existing 
sovereign  and  recognized  no  government  except 
that  which  these  wanderers  from  Massachusetts 
had  made  for  themselves.  In  that  again  it  served  as 
the  model  on  which  in  the  following  century  the 
American  constitution  was  founded,  which  recog 
nizes  neither  temporal  nor  spiritual  ruler  and  ac 
knowledges  only  the  sovereign  rule  of  the  people. 
"It  is  on  the  banks  of  the  Connecticut,  under  the 
mighty  preaching  of  Thomas  Hooker  and  in  the 
Constitution  to  which  he  gave  life,  if  not  form,  that 
we  draw  the  first  breath  of  that  atmosphere  which 
is  now  so  familiar  to  us.  The  birthplace  of  Ameri 
can  democracy  is  Hartford."  * 

Just  as  the  American  Constitution  puts  in  the 

1  Johnston:  Connecticut,  p.  73. 


342          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

hands  of  Congress  certain  enumerated  powers  and 
reserves  to  the  states  and  the  people  those  powers 
on  which  silence  is  maintained,  so  the  Constitution 
of  Connecticut  reserved  to  the  towns  all  power  and 
authority  save  that  vested  in  the  General  Court.  The 
President  of  the  American  Republic  is  elected  by  a 
majority  vote,  and  the  power  of  the  people  is  lodged 
in  the  hands  of  its  representatives  on  a  basis  of 
equality.  The  Governor  of  Connecticut,  who  was 
to  the  little  republic  what  the  President  is  to  the 
larger  federation,  and  his  council  were  elected  by 
the  people  at  large,  the  suffrage  being  almost  uni 
versal,  but  each  town  had  an  equality  of  representa 
tion  in  the  Assembly.  While  Connecticut  exercised 
no  such  influence  on  the  American  people  as  Mas 
sachusetts  and  Virginia,  to  it  belongs  the  credit  of 
having  brought  about  at  the  formation  of  the  Con 
stitution  of  the  United  States,  the  compromise  by 
which  the  states  were  given  equal  representation  in 
the  Senate  and  the  composition  of  the  House  of 
Representatives  was  accepted. 

Why  the  Connecticut  Englishmen  should  have 
developed  an  individuality  marked  and  character 
istic  enough  to  differentiate  them  from  the  English 
men  of  Massachusetts  and  those  of  the  other  New 
England  colonies  it  is  not  easy  to  determine,  but 
that  distinction  was  early  apparent  and  has  sur 
vived.  The  popular  name  of  Americans  among 
Europeans  is  "Yankees,"  and  the  term  is  synony 
mous  in  the  European  mind  with  sharp  trading, 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  343 

acquisitiveness,  and  abnormal  curiosity  about  the 
affairs  of  one's  neighbors,1  but  among  Americans  it 
is  only  the  New  Englanders  who  are  regarded  as 
the  real  Yankees,  and  their  distinguishing  qualities 
are  supposed  to  be  typical  of  the  people  of  Con 
necticut.  As  a  matter  of  fact,  as  every  American 
knows,  the  Massachusetts  man  rather  resents  the 
appellation  of  Yankee. 

The  little  federal  republic  of  Connecticut  was 
allowed  to  develop  peacefully  and  normally ;  its  con 
stitution  was  not  violently  wrenched  out  of  shape 
like  that  of  Massachusetts  at  the  end  of  the  seven 
teenth  century.  It  silently  grew  until  it  became  the 
strongest  political  structure  on  the  continent.2 

Side  by  side  with  the  federal  republic  of  Hart 
ford  there  grew  up  another  federation  under  the 
name  of  New  Haven,  wrhich  was  founded  in  1638. 
As  Hooker  was  the  leading  spirit  at  Hartford  so 

1  "Rural  Yankees,  impudent,  inquisitive,  grasping,  sharp,  drawling  in 
speech  and  utterly  without  manners,  —  a  class  which  has  most  fortunately 
passed  away,  but  which  once  furnished  the  stock  materiaJ  for  Charles  Dickens 
and  other  English  writers  who  ridiculed  Americans.   Occasionally ,  in  remote 
parts  of  New  England,  you  may  find  survivors  of  this  class,  and  if  one  fastens 
himself  on  you,  as  they  are  apt  to  do,  you  will  never  forget  him."  —  Sydney 
George  Fisher:  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times,  vol.  ii,  p.  140. 

"Obadiah  or  Zephaniah,  from  Hampshire  or  Connecticut,  who  came  in 
without  knocking;  sat  down  without  invitation;  and  lighted  their  pipe  with 
out  ceremony;  then  talked  of  buying  land;  and,  finally,  began  a  discourse  on 
politics,  which  would  have  done  honor  to  Praise  God  Barebones,  or  any  of 
the  members  of  his  parliament."  —  Mrs.  Grant,  Memoirs  of  an  American 
Lady,  p.  286. 

An  equally  uncomplimentary  picture  of  these  inquisitive  Yankees  may  be 
seen  in  Washington  Irving's  Knickerbocker. 

2  Fiske:  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  128. 


344          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

another  clergyman,  John  Davenport,  was  foremost 
in  the  affairs  of  the  younger  colony.    Davenport  had 
none  of  Hooker's  liberality  and  tolerance;  he  was 
typical  of  the  intense  Puritanism  of  his  time,  and 
New  Haven  was  intended  to  be  even  more  extreme 
in  its  theocratic  government  than  Massachusetts. 
According  to  Davenport,  man  found  in  the  Bible  a 
perfect  and  sufficient  rule  for  the  conduct  of  civil 
affairs,  and  membership  in  the  church  was  a  pre 
requisite  of  citizenship;  it  was  Massachusetts  over 
again.    Just  as  Hartford  had  been  formed  by  the 
federation  of  the  towns,  so  the  New  Haven  colony 
came  into  existence  by  a  union  of  New  Haven, 
Milford,    Guilford,    and    Stamford.    New    Haven, 
similar  to  Hartford,  set  up  its  own  establishment 
without  regard  to  the  sovereignty  of  England  or  the 
rights  or  claims  of  any  other  body  of  Englishmen. 
The  founders  of  New  Haven  assumed  as  an  inher 
ent  right  the  right  to  be  independent  and,  as  its 
corollary,  to  do  as  they  saw  fit.    They  had  not  even 
a  shadowy  claim  to  the  title  of  the  land  which  they 
occupied.     They  simply  planted  themselves  there 
and  were  content  to  let  the  future  take  care  of  itself. 
Connecticut,  when  these  two  little  republics  came 
into  existence,  reproduced  what  had  happened  in 
Massacusetts  a  few  years  before.    The  sweetness 
and  mildness  of  the  Plymouth  Pilgrims  found  their 
counterpart  in  Hooker  and  the  Hartford  colony; 
the  grim  intolerance  and  blind  obedience  to  Biblical 
law  and  the  passionate  zeal  to  regulate  all  conduct 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  345 

was  the  Puritan  dower  to  the  New  Haven  republic. 
Davenport  and  his  associates  read  in  the  Bible  that 
wrisdom  hath  builded  her  house,  she  hath  hewn  out 
her  seven  pillars,1  and  in  accordance  with  this  in 
junction  each  town  was  governed  by  seven  pillars  of 
the  church,  who  were  not  only  the  pillars  of  the 
church  but  also  the  foundation  and  capstone  of 
society,  as  they  were  the  magistrates  of  the  colony, 
and  judges  as  well  as  jury.  The  New  Haven 
fathers  would  not  permit  juries  because  they  could 
find  no  warrant  for  the  institution  in  the  laws  of 
Moses.  In  Hartford  there  was  practically  universal 
suffrage ;  in  New  Haven  only  church  members  were 
allowed  to  vote,  which  resulted  in  nearly  one-half 
of  the  settlers  being  disfranchised  and  the  power  of 
government  passing  into  the  hands  of  the  most 
illiberal  element  of  the  community,  who  used  their 
power  with  all  the  perverted  zeal  that  intolerance 
has  always  delighted  in.  It  was  not  sufficient  that 
they  regulate  the  affairs  of  the  little  state,  but  they 
must  needs  make  men  walk  according  to  their  own 
peculiar  notions.  They  were  continually  prying  into 
what  men  and  women  said  or  thought,  and  word 
or  thought  that  departed  from  the  standard  bigoted 
dogmatism  set  up  was  swiftly  punished. 

"  Goodman  Hunt  and  his  wife,  for  keeping  the 
councils  of  the  said  William  Harding,  baking  him 
a  pasty  and  plum  cakes,  and  keeping  company 
with  him  on  the  Lord's  day,  and  she  suffering 

Proverbs  ix,  9. 


346          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Harding  to  kiss  her,  were  ordered  to  be  sent  out 
of  town  within  one  month  after  the  date  hereof 
(March  1,  1643),  yea,  in  a  shorter  time  if  any  mis 
carriage  be  found  in  them."  l  The  way  to  reform, 
to  subdue  the  devil  and  chasten  the  spirit,  lay 
through  the  statute-books,  for  the  surest  means  to 
make  men  God-fearing  and  strengthen  them  against 
temptations  of  the  flesh  was  to  enact  a  law  that 
would  provide  a  punishment  for  its  violation.  The 
laws  that  New  Haven  enacted  are  delicious  in  their 
quaintness,  and  it  is  these  enactments  with  which 
that  veracious  Tory  refugee,  the  Rev.  Samuel 
Peters,  tickled  the  fancy  of  the  world  when  he  pub 
lished  his  Blue  Laws  of  Connecticut.2  There  was 
so  little  of  this  spirit  in  Hartford  that  its  occasional 
manifestation  attracts  attention  by  its  rarity.  There 
is  mention  made  of  a  Hartford  man  being  punished 
for  saying  that  he  looked  forward  with  pleasure  to 
meeting  some  of  the  members  of  his  church  in  hell, 
and  considering  the  temper  of  some  of  those  mem 
bers  perhaps  the  remark  was  not  unwarranted. 

They  were  a  godly  and  proper  people,  these 
Connecticut  forefathers,  to  whom  virtue  was  a  pre 
cious  thing  and  unchastity  severely  punished,  and 
yet  they  saw  no  vice  in  "bundling,"  which  was 
carried  to  greater  lengths  in  Connecticut  and 
Massachusetts  than  elsewhere,  and  at  last  became 
such  a  scandal  that  the  church  was  forced  to  sup 
press  it.  Webster  defines  the  intransitive  verb 

1  Johnston:  Connecticut,  p.  99.  2  See  p.  185. 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  347 

bundle  "  to  sleep  on  the  same  bed  without  undress 
ing;  applied  to  the  custom  of  a  man  and  woman, 
especially  lovers,  thus  sleeping" ;  and  the  last  edition 
of  the  Century  Dictionary  gives  this  definition :  "In 
New  England  (in  early  time)  and  in  Wales,  to 
sleep  in  the  same  bed  without  undressing;  applied 
to  the  custom  of  men  and  women,  especially  sweet 
hearts,  thus  sleeping."  Defenders  of  the  colonists 
have  denied  that  bundling  was  a  common  or 
generally  sanctioned  custom,  but  Stiles,  who  has 
written  an  extremely  interesting  little  book  on  the 
subject,  which  shows  careful  investigation  and 
judicial  impartiality,  says:- 

"  Badinage,  ridicule  and  misrepresentation  aside, 
however,  there  can  be  no  reasonable  doubt  that 
bundling  did  prevail  to  a  very  great  extent  in  the 
New  England  colonies  from  a  very  early  day.  It  is 
equally  evident  it  was  originally  confined  entirely 
to  the  lower  classes  of  the  community,  or  to  those 
whose  limited  means  compelled  them  to  economize 
strictly  in  their  expenditure  of  firewood  and  candle 
light.  Many,  perhaps  the  majority,  of  the  dwellings 
of  the  early  settlers,  consisted  of  but  one  room,  in 
which  the  whole  family  lived  and  slept.  Yet  their 
innocence  and  generous  hospitality  forbade  that  the 
stranger,  or  the  friend  whom  night  overtook  on 
their  threshold,  should  be  turned  shelterless  and 
couchless  awray,  so  long  as  they  could  offer  him  even 
a  half  of  a  bed."  1 

1  Stiles:  Bundling;  its  Origin,  Progress,  and  Decline  in  America,  pp.  66-67. 


348          THE   AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

In  Massachusetts  the  custom  was  not  confined 
to  the  lower  classes,  if  contemporary  writers  are  to 
be  believed;  and  mothers  who  carefully  watched 
their  daughters  saw  no  impropriety  in  bundling. 
After  the  French  and  Indian  wars,  the  young  men 
returning  from  camp  and  army,  where  they  had 
learned  vices  and  recklessness,  deprived  bundling 
of  any  innocence  it  possessed.  The  evil  became 
so  apparent  that  a  decided  movement  was  made 
against  it.  Jonathan  Edwards  denounced  it  from 
the  pulpit,  and  one  by  one  the  ministers  who 
had  allowed  it  to  pass  unnoticed  joined  in  its 
suppression.1 

Stiles  says,  "We  may  notice,  in  this  connection, 
that  it  is  very  common,  even  at  the  present  day,  in 
New  England,  to  speak  of  one  as  having  'bundled 
in  with  his  clothes  on,'  if  he  goes  to  bed  without 
undressing ;  as  for  instance,  if  he  came  home  drunk, 
or  feeling  slightly  ill,  lay  down  in  the  daytime,  or  in 
a  cold  night  found  the  blankets  too  scanty."  2 

Bundling  is  said  by  the  detractors  of  America  to 
have  originated  in  America,  but  like  many  other 
American  institutions,  especially  those  of  which  the 

1  Fisher:  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times,  vol.  i,  p.  287. 

2  Stiles:  op.  tit.,  pp.  13-14. 

I  am  told  by  a  woman,  who  traces  her  descent  back  to  colonial  times  and 
until  her  marriage  lived  in  Marblehead,  that  in  that  quaint  old  Massachusetts 
seaport, bundling  still  survives  to  a  limited  extent,  but  only  among  the  lowest 
classes. 

"  It  is  a  certain  fact,  well  authenticated  by  court  records  and  parish  regis 
ters,  that,  wherever  the  practice  of  bundling  prevailed,  there  was  an  amazing 
number  of  sturdy  brats  annually  born  into  the  state,  without  the  license  of 
the  law  or  the  benefit  of  clergy."  —Irving,  A  History  of  New  York,  p.  210. 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  349 

world  no  longer  approves,  it  is  an  exotic.  Stiles 
traces  it  back  to  England,  Scotland,  and  Wales,  and 
undoubtedly  it  was  a  transplanted  custom. 

One  of  the  most  interesting  phases  of  American 
development  is  that  marked  spirit  of  justice  which 
made  it  possible  for  liberty  and  bigotry  to  exist  side 
by  side  without  provoking  civil  war  or  conflict. 
In  Massachusetts  we  have  those  gentle  Pilgrims 
going  their  own  way  without  interference  from  the 
Puritans  made  strong  by  their  belief  that  they  were 
raised  up  by  the  Lord  for  His  especial  purpose.  In 
Connecticut  Hooker  preached  tolerance  and  taught 
men  liberality  and  went  about  his  work  unharmed 
by  the  zealots  of  New  Haven,  whose  zeal  for  con 
version  was  as  great  as  that  of  the  early  Spaniards, 
who  knew  only  one  way  to  convince  men  of  their 
errors.  Wlien  Roger  Williams  revolted  against  the 
Massachusetts  theocracy  he  was  banished,  which 
was  a  political  necessity,  but  he  was  allowed  to  set 
up  his  own  government  unmolested.  This  broad 
spirit  of  humanity,  this  recognition  of  the  rights  of 
others,  this  almost  scrupulous  regard  to  obtain 
nothing  by  conquest  and  to  abstain  from  force  in 
dominating  weaker  colonies  —  compare  this  with 
the  prevailing  spirit  existing  in  Europe,  which  was 
the  legacy  of  history,  and  see  how  remarkable, 
almost  inexplicable  it  appears.  The  natural  temp 
tation  of  Massachusetts  would  have  been  to  incor 
porate  Plymouth,  peaceably  if  possible,  forcibly  if 
necessary;  of  Hartford  to  have  regarded  with  fear 


350          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

and  distrust  the  establishment  of  New  Haven;  to 
have  been  watchful  and  suspicious,  and  to  have 
raised  a  force  to  repel  invasion  or  to  seek  a  pretext 
to  use  it  for  aggression.  In  all  the  history  of  the 
colonies  that  attempt  was  never  made,  and  English 
men  who  had  established  settlement  or  colony  had 
nothing  to  fear  from  men  of  their  own  blood;  nor 
did  they  live  in  constant  apprehension  of  having  to 
yield  their  independence  to  satisfy  the  rapacity  of 
conscienceless  adventurers  or  the  ambition  of  self- 
constituted  rulers. 

With  the  settlement  of  Connecticut  begins  the 
long  chapter  of  Indian  warfare  that  raged  through 
out  the  seventeenth  century  and  was  closed  late  in 
the  next  only  when  the  red  man  had  been  practically 
exterminated  and  the  superior  skill  and  resources 
of  the  white  man  overmatched  the  cunning  and 
fanaticism  of  the  savage. 

The  Indian  has  been  one  of  the  subordinate 
causes  to  influence  American  civilization,  not  by 
grafting  his  own  civilization  on  that  of  the  English, 
not  because  the  English  absorbed  him,  his  customs, 
language,  or  religion;  not  because  the  Indian  in  the 
smallest  degree  swayed  an  unyielding  and  firmly 
established  civilization;  but  because  Indian  warfare 
and  the  necessity  of  subduing  the  Indian  to  clear  the 
way  for  the  invading  white  man  left  its  lasting  mark 
on  the  character  of  the  colonists.  Two  great  bar 
riers  challenged  the  Englishman;  the  wilderness 
and  the  Indians.  In  New  England  as  well  as  in 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  351 

the  South,  later  when  there  was  that  response  to  the 
imperious  call  of  the  West,  the  ground  was  contested 
by  the  aborigines,  who  resisted  the  despoiler  to  the 
end.  Slowly  civilization  drove  back  savagery,  wrest 
ing  from  it  its  inheritance,  paying  in  full  in  blood; 
and  men  w^ere  made  keen  and  became  hardened  by 
the  conflict;  they  were  made  cruel  by  contact  with  a 
foe  whose  warfare  exacted  vengeance  to  the  last  drop. 
The  Indian  wars  kept  alive  the  military  spirit  — 
and  while  the  Americans  are  not  a  warlike  people,  in 
them  the  military  spirit  is  highly  developed  —  they 
made  the  pioneer  and  settler  live  in  the  fear  of 
surprise  and  always  ready  to  resist  it;  it  deprived 
them  of  that  sense  of  security  that  might  have  sunk 
them  in  sloth  and  brought  contentment  in  isolation. 
Had  there  been  no  Indians,  the  Americans  might 
easily  have  become  a  pastoral  and  agricultural 
people,  physically  soft,  unsuspicious,  fonder  of  the 
gentle  arts  than  the  ruder  struggle  of  commerce. 
The  Indian  hardened  the  body  of  the  American 
by  making  him  a  soldier,  as  from  youth  up  he 
was  accustomed  to  firearms,  and  at  church  and  in 
the  field  his  musket  was  always  by  his  side.  It 
produced  that  extraordinary  military  initiative  and 
resource  that  was  the  admiration  and  amazement 
of  European  military  critics,  that  made  it  possible 
for  men  in  the  ranks  to  rise  to  command,  that  made 
a  standing  army  unnecessary.  The  readiness  with 
which  Americans  in  their  early  days  took  to  the 
field  was  the  result  of  this  training,  and  the  tactics 


352          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

which  the  Indian  had  taught  them  they  used  against 
men  of  their  own  race.  The  Indian  sharpened  the 
wits  of  the  white  man  because  the  cunning  of  the 
savage  was  superior  to  the  slow- moving  mind  of 
the  Englishman ;  he  taught  his  own  love  of  cruelty 
and  delight  in  suffering. 

There  are  to  be  found  American  apologists  for 
the  American  treatment  of  the  Indian ;  and  perhaps 
these  apologies  are  not  without  warrant,  and  we 
read  with  horror  accounts  of  massacre,  rapine,  and 
torture;  the  white  man  no  less  cruel  and  merciless 
than  the  Indian.  But  Englishmen  were  confronting 
a  foe  who  knew  no  mercy,  and  to  whom  the  gener 
osity  of  the  victor  in  the  hour  of  triumph  was 
interpreted  not  as  the  mercy  of  the  strong  but  the 
fear  of  the  weak;  a  foe  that  understood  only  the 
meaning  of  reprisal ;  whose  respect  for  their  enemy 
increased  the  more  he  imitated  their  own  methods 
and  exacted  life  for  life  and  tortured  and  destroyed 
even  as  they  did.  "Often  the  white  men  and  red 
fought  one  another  wherever  they  met,  and  dis 
played  in  their  conflict  all  the  cunning  and  merciless 
ferocity  that  made  warfare  so  dreadful.  Terrible 
deeds  of  prowess  were  done  by  the  mighty  men  on 
either  side.  It  was  a  war  of  stealth  and  cruelty, 
and  ceaseless,  sleepless  watchfulness.  The  contest 
ants  had  sinewy  frames  and  iron  wills,  keen  eyes 
and  steady  hands,  hearts  as  bold  as  they  were  ruth 
less."  l  Men  on  the  frontier  lived  from  month  to 

1  Roosevelt:  The  Winning  of  the  West,  vol.  i,  p.  191. 


FIRST  WRITTEN  CONSTITUTION  353 

month  and  year  to  year  under  the  terror  which  at 
length  taught  them  to  regard  their  enemies  as  wild 
beasts.1 

A  higher  civilization  was  opposed  to  a  lower,  a 
rudimentary  race  sought  to  interpose  an  obstacle 
to  the  spread  of  a  race  highly  developed.  It  was 
inevitable  that  the  conflict  should  come  and  civiliza 
tion  win  the  mastery.  It  was  not  ethical,  perhaps, 
but  it  was  inexorable. 

1  Doyle:  English  Colonies  in  America,  vol.  iii,  p.  348. 


CHAPTER  XX 

RELIGIOUS   FREEDOM   IS   BORN 

IN  the  hagiology  of  each  nation,  says  Emerson, 
the  lawgiver  was  in  each  case  a  man  of  eloquent 
tongue,  whose  sympathy  brought  him  face  to  face 
with  the  extremes  of  society.  In  the  hagiology  of 
Rhode  Island  we  have  the  lawgiver  of  eloquent 
tongue,  a  man  of  such  ardent  sympathy  that  he  was 
able  to  envisage  the  future,  who  gathered  around 
him  the  extremes  of  society  as  society  manifested 
itself  through  its  religious  views ;  a  man  half  mystic 
but  yet  extremely  practical,  whose  liberality  made 
him  far  in  advance  of  his  time,  but  who  was  able 
to  draw  the  line  between  liberty  and  license.  The 
name  of  Roger  Williams  is  inseparably  associated 
with  Rhode  Island,  and  it  vividly  recalls  the  narrow 
formalism  of  the  Puritan,  his  intense  intolerance 
and  the  methods  he  employed  to  root  out  any 
attempt  to  challenge  the  supremacy  of  the  theocracy. 
There  came  to  Massachusetts  in  1631  "the 
founder  of  a  new  state,  the  exponent  of  a  new 
philosophy,  the  intellect  that  was  to  harmonize 
religious  differences,  and  soothe  the  sectarian  as 
perities  of  the  New  World;  a  man  whose  clearness 
of  mind  enabled  him  to  deduce,  from  the  mass  of 
crude  speculations  which  abounded  in  the  seven- 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN    355 

teenth-century,  a  proposition  so  comprehensive, 
that  it  is  difficult  to  say  whether  its  application  has 
produced  the  most  beneficial  result  upon  religion, 
or  morals,  or  politics."  1  This  striking  figure  was 
Roger  Williams,  a  Welshman,  then  about  thirty 
years  old,  who  had  taken  his  degree  at  Pembroke 
College,  Cambridge,  but  who  had  incurred  the 
hostility  of  Laud  for  the  boldness  of  his  opinions. 
He  was  a  man  of  scholarship  and  ability,  with  all  of 
a  Welshman's  fiery  love  of  argument,  "conscien 
tiously  contentious,"  as  one  of  his  biographers  has 
said;  but  "most  men  who  contribute  materially 
towards  bringing  about  great  changes,  religious  or 
moral,  are  'conscientiously  contentious.'  Were  they 
not  so  they  would  not  accomplish  the  work  they  are 
here  to  do";2  pugnacious,  turbulent,  and  at  times 
guilty  of  " blazing  indiscretions,"  but  always  over 
flowing  with  charity  and  driven  impetuously  for 
ward  to  preach  the  great  doctrine  of  civil  and 
religious  liberty.  A  very  human  man  this,  "lovely 
in  his  carriage,"  whom  men  of  his  race  trusted  and 
the  Indians  loved,  "a  mighty  and  benignant  form, 
always  pleading  for  some  magnanimous  idea,  some 
tender  charity,  the  rectification  of  some  wrong,  the 
exercise  of  some  sort  of  forbearance  towards  men's 
bodies  and  souls."3  Not  the  kind  of  man  who  would 
easily  fit  into  "the  Puritan  starch  and  uniform," 

1  Arnold:  History  of  the  State  of  Rhode  Island  and  Providence  Planta 
tions,  vol.  i,  p.  20. 

3  Adams:  Massachusetts:  Its  Historians  and  its  History,  p.  25. 
3  Tyler:  History  of  American  Literature,  p.  243. 


356          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

but  one  who  would  rudely  shock  the  narrow  for 
mulas  of  stiff  saints  cast  in  the  mould  of  an  iron- 
bound  church.  He  was  determined  to  run  counter  to 
the  theocratic  oligarchy. 

Invited  soon  after  his  coming  to  Salem  to  become 
assistant  to  the  pastor,  he  quickly  incurred  the  dis 
pleasure  of  the  rulers  of  Massachusetts  by  writing 
a  treatise  in  which  he  attacked  the  validity  of  the 
Massachusetts  patent,  holding  that  the  King  had  no 
power  to  grant  the  land  to  settlers  unless  they  pur 
chased  it  from  the  Indians.  Such  a  doctrine  was 
monstrous,  as  it  struck  at  the  root  of  all  society 
and  would  have  established  the  duty  of  the  strong 
to  respect  the  rights  of  weak  -9  native  races,  which, 
if  observed,  robbed  colonization  of  its  great  profit 
and  gave  little  encouragement  to  adventurers  to 
risk  much  for  the  honor  of  the  nation  and  their 
own  advantage.  Not  content  with  this  heinous 
sin,  he  must  needs  still  further  attempt  to  disrupt 
society  by  boldly  announcing  that  the  magistrates 
had  arrogated  to  themselves  too  much  power,  and 
that  the  state  had  no  right  to  control  the  religious 
opinion  of  its  subjects.  Perhaps  it  was  fortunate 
for  Williams  that  he  gave  utterance  to  these  views 
in  Massachusetts  and  not  in  England,  for  there  he 
would  probably  have  been  hanged  for  sedition,  at 
least  he  would  have  been  branded,  and  made  to 
stand  in  the  pillory  with  his  ears  cropped. 

Massachusetts  dealt  with  heresiarchs  in  another 
way.  The  obstinate  pastor  was  brought  before  the 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN    357 

General  Court  and  offered  an  opportunity  to  re 
tract.  He  stood  stubborn  in  his  recusancy.  Then 
began  one  of  those  solemn  farces  which  so  delighted 
the  Puritans,  but  which  to  them  was  no  farce  but 
the  great  tragedy  of  Satan  fighting  to  keep  his  con 
trol  over  a  soul  brought  to  damnation  through  his 
devilish  machinations;  to  them  a  ceremony  as 
awful  and  impressive  as  the  auto-da-fe.  Hour  after 
hour  he  was  confronted  by  the  accusing  dialec 
ticians,  but  he  faced  his  judges  serenely,  perhaps 
secretly  glad  to  be  given  this  great  opportunity  to 
spread  his  doctrines  before  this  high  and  mighty 
audience;  and  a  jury,  which  convicted  him  before 
he  uttered  the  first  word  in  his  defence,  passed 
sentence  of  banishment;  or  in  the  delightful  eu 
phemism  of  John  Cotton,  one  of  his  foremost  ad 
versaries,  he  was  "enlarged  out  of  Massachusetts." 
Tempering  justice  with  mercy,  he  was  given  six 
weeks,  it  then  being  the  depth  of  winter,  to  make 
his  preparations  for  departure,  but  Williams  was 
no  man  to  sit  with  hands  folded  and  tongue  bridled. 
Full  of  energy  and  defiance,  scorning  to  recant 
although  he  had  been  condemned,  he  at  once  began 
preparations  to  found  a  new  colony  recruited  from 
men  who  shared  his  opinions.  This  contumacy 
merited  extreme  measures,  and  the  rulers  of  Massa 
chusetts  made  preparations  to  rid  themselves  of 
their  danger  by  putting  Williams  on  a  ship  about 
to  sail  for  England,  when  he  received  timely  warn 
ing  and  plunged  into  the  wilderness.  After  many 


358          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

adventures  he  and  a  few  followers  laid  the  founda 
tion  of  a  settlement  which  is  now  the  city  of  Provi 
dence  in  the  state  of  Rhode  Island.  It  was  land 
belonging  to  the  Indians  on  which  he  set  foot,  and 
faithful  to  his  principles  he  made  no  attempt  to 
seize  it,  but  bought  it  from  the  Indians. 

We  shall  for  the  moment  leave  Roger  Williams 
beginning  the  new  life  at  Providence  on  amicable 
terms  with  the  Indians  and  go  back  to  Massachu 
setts,  because  certain  events  there  had  a  direct 
bearing  on  what  was  to  become  in  the  course  of  time 
a  new  state ;  and  we  get  a  very  clear  insight  into  the 
Puritan  mind  and  the  state  of  society  in  the  early 
days  of  the  Massachusetts  colony.  Williams  ar 
rived  in  New  England  in  1631.  Three  years  later 
there  came  to  Boston  William  Hutchinson  and  his 
wife  Anne,  who  was  to  play  the  most  conspicuous 
part  in  a  great  religious  controversy,  but  it  was 
something  much  more  vital  than  a  mere  theological 
dispute  -  "it  was  the  first  of  many  New  England 
quickenings  in  the  direction  of  social,  intellectual, 
and  political  development,  —  New  England's  earli 
est  protest  against  formulas." 1  This  Mistress  Anne 
Hutchinson  was  a  woman  "of  haughty  and  fierce 
carriage,  of  a  nimble  wit  and  active  spirit,  and  a 
very  voluble  tongue,  more  bold  than  a  man,  though 
in  understanding  and  judgment  inferior  to  many 
women."  This  is  the  portrait  drawn  by  one  of 
her  bitter  enemies  and  perhaps  exaggerates  her 

1  Adams:  Three  Episodes  of  Massachusetts  History,  vol.  i,  p.  367. 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN     359 

most  undesirable  qualities  and  ignores  those  that 
redeemed  her,  but  in  a  few  vigorous  strokes  it  paints 
her  probably  very  true  to  life.  Of  her  "ready  wit 
and  bold  spirit,"1  in  the  moderate  words  of  Win- 
throp,  who  had  bitter  occasion  more  than  once  to 
experience  both,  there  has  been  given  abundant 
proof.  Of  her  husband  little  need  be  said.  He  is 
described  by  contemporaries  as  "  a  man  of  very  mild 
temper  and  weak  parts  and  wholly  guided  by  his 
wife."  2  Perhaps  it  was  fortunate.  One  small  frame 
house  would  hardly  have  been  large  enough  to 
shelter  two  such  turbulent  spirits  as  Mistress  Anne. 
She  \vas  at  that  time  about  thirty-four  years  old,  a 
woman  whom  not  even  her  most  devoted  eulogist  has 
called  beautiful  or  even  pretty,  but  who  possessed 
that  most  insidious  and  greatest  of  all  gifts  of  her 
sex,  that  indefinable  and  intangible  magnetism  of 
sympathy,  the  possession  of  which  makes  a  woman 
become  for  the  moment  vividly  interested  in  the 
man  with  whom  she  holds  converse  and  stimulates 
him  and  attracts  him;  which  gives  more  than  it 
takes  and  leaves  the  impress  of  its  own  individuality. 
She  was  not  a  learned  woman,  but  she  had  a  re 
markable  native  talent  for  disputation  which  she 
clothed  in  language  difficult  to  confute.  That  she 
exercised  great  power  over  men  and  intellectually 
fascinated  them  is  indisputable. 

In  her  was  the  spirit  of  the  mystic  as  well  as  that 

1  Winthrop:  History  of  New  England,  vol.  i,  p.  239. 

2  Winthrop:  op.  cit.,  vol.  i,  p.  356. 


360          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

of  the  reformer.  She  drew  around  her  the  women 
of  the  colony,  first,  innocently  enough,  simply 
repeating  to  them  the  sermons  she  had  heard  in 
the  meeting-house,  but  later  acting  as  interpreter 
and  critic.  Now  we  have  seen  that  the  Puritans 
would  tolerate  no  attempt  on  the  part  of  the  people 
to  depart  from  the  Word  of  God  as  it  was  given  to 
them  by  their  ministers,  and  they,  despite  all 
their  pious  humility  and  their  constant  reiteration 
of  unworthiness,  were  fully  conscious  of  their 
position  of  commanding  importance  in  the  com 
munity,  and  for  the  preservation  of  their  own 
privileged  class  permitted  no  rival  prophets.  Neo- 
logical  tendencies  were  sternly  suppressed.  The 
Puritan  ministers  at  the  beginning  of  Massachu 
setts  were  lawgivers  as  well  as  teachers,  and  their 
authority  rested  on  the  blind  obedience  with  which 
they  were  obeyed  by  their  congregations.  We  do 
not  often  associate  the  idea  of  superstition  with  the 
Puritans,  and  yet,  in  a  sense,  the  Puritans  were  no 
less  superstitious  than  any  other  religious  sect  who 
passively  submitted  to  a  narrow  and  dogmatic  creed 
and  disciplined  themselves  to  accept  without  ques 
tion  the  rule  of  life  as  expounded  to  them  by  their 
spiritual  leaders. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson  not  only  arrogated  to  herself,  in 
flat  defiance  of  the  clergy,  the  ability  to  interpret  the 
Scriptures,  but  she  was  possessed  of  something  of 
which  even  the  most  learned  and  godly  among  them 
were  deficient.  She  professed  at  times  to  feel  the 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN     361 

Spirit  of  God  upon  her  and  to  speak  from  the  in 
ward  knowledge  that  had  come  to  her.  She  dis 
claimed  the  gift  of  prophecy  or  that  she  was  divinely 
inspired,  although  it  is  not  easy  to  see  where  she 
drew  the  shadowy  line,  but  she  asserted  that  she 
was  apart  and  different  from  ordinary  women ;  and 
this  claim  to  a  precious  gift  was  the  one  thing  to 
condemn  her  in  the  eyes  of  the  clergy.  Grace  came 
from  without,  not  from  within,  which  was  the  pre 
sumption  of  sin  and  not  the  humility  of  the  regen 
erate  struggling  to  be  made  strong.  In  the  eyes  of 
the  ministers,  Mrs.  Hutchinson,  by  her  claim  to 
mantistic  qualities,  was  guilty  of  blasphemy,  and  of 
course  there  was  always  the  suspicion  of  the  devil's 
help.  Mr.  Hales,  "a  young  man  very  well  conceited 
of  himself  and  censorious  of  others,"  after  Mrs. 
Hutchinson's  removal  to  Aquidneck,  "was  also 
taken  with  her  heresies,  and  in  great  admiration  of 
her,  so  as  these,  and  other  the  like  before,  when  she 
dwelt  in  Boston,  gave  cause  of  suspicion  of  witch 
craft."  1 

It  is  proof  of  that  immanent  sense  of  personal 
liberty  so  deeply  rooted  in  the  English  character, 
which  has  manifested  itself  in  the  whole  history  of 
the  race,  that  even  in  that  early  day  of  the  minis 
ter-ridden  Puritan  colony  Mrs.  Hutchinson  should 
have  been  able  to  gather  around  her  a  follow 
ing  who  with  vigor  and  courage  supported  and 
defended  her.  Winthrop  declared  that  the  whole 

1  Winthrop:  History  of  New  England,  vol.  ii,  p.  10. 


362          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

church  of  Boston,  with  few  exceptions,  had  become 
her  converts ;  Welde,  who  was  to  become  her  chief 
accuser,  lamented  that  persons  of  quality  and  gentle 
men  and  scholars  were  among  her  adherents.  Deep 
down  in  the  hearts  of  those  gentlemen  and  scholars, 
there  must  have  been  the  quickening  thought  that 
Puritan  oppression  was  no  less  to  be  feared  than  the 
oppression  from  which  they  had  fled  in  England ;  it 
was  a  protest  against  the  attempt  to  stifle  individual 
ism.  It  was  the  beginning  of  the  great  Antinomian 
controversy  that  raged  with  such  bitterness  in  New 
England  until  the  Puritan  theocracy  ceased  to 
exist. 

Theological  controversies,  it  has  been  truly  ob 
served,  are  as  a  rule  among  the  most  barren  of  the 
many  barren  fields  of  historical  research;  and  the 
literature  of  which  they  are  so  fruitful  may,  so  far 
as  the  reader  of  to-day  is  concerned,  best  be  de 
scribed  by  the  single  word  impossible.1  It  would 
weary  the  reader  to  translate  into  modern  language 
the  curious  jumble  of  words  which  were  the 
weapons  employed  by  these  valiant  champions,  nor 
is  it  necessary  in  a  work  of  this  character.  It  would 
be  profitless  to  discuss  the  merits  of  the  Covenant 
of  Grace  as  distinguished  from  the  Covenant  of 
Works;  and  these  obscure  theological  disputes 
about  trifles  that  mean  nothing,  which  aroused 
passion  and  rooted  bigotry  deeper,  and  advanced 
the  world  not  one  iota,  and  contributed  nothing  to 

1  Adams:  op.  dt.t  vol.  i,  p.  366. 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN    363 

the  happiness  or  the  welfare  of  mankind,  seem  to  us 
now  so  childish  that  we  are  amazed  that  men  of 
common  sense  should  so  foolishly  waste  their  time 
and  their  energies  when  much  better  things  were 
waiting  to  be  done. 

Mrs.  Hutchinson's  teachings  had  now  reached 
that  point  when  they  threatened  the  disruption  of 
the  colony,  and  she  was  brought  to  trial  before  the 
General  Court.  It  was  a  trial  typical  of  the  time 
and  the  Puritan  character.  The  woman,  shortly  to 
become  a  mother,  made  to  stand  in  the  presence  of 
that  august  tribunal  until  "her  countenance  dis 
covered  some  bodily  infirmity,"  unprovided  with 
counsel,  her  witnesses  browbeaten,  the  few  mem 
bers  of  the  Court  who  were  well  disposed  towards 
her  rebuked  by  their  associates,  faced  her  accus 
ers  boldly  and  showed  her  skill  in  dispute;  she  met 
the  subtle  arguments  of  her  persecutors  with  the 
ingenuity  for  which  she  was  famous  and  more  than 
once  disconcerted  her  judges;  but  nothing  moved 
them.  Passionless  they  would  have  gazed  on  the 
lustrous  bosom  of  Phryne  as  they  looked  without 
emotion  on  the  mock  humility  of  their  victim. 
Pleading,  but  defiant,  when  Governor  Winthrop 
pronounced  sentence  of  banishment  she  asked: 
"I  desire  to  know  wherefore  I  am  banished,"  to 
which  Winthrop  replied:  "Say  no  more.  The 
court  know^s  wherefore,  and  is  satisfied."  It  was 
indicative  of  the  farcical  proceedings.  The  Court 
was  satisfied;  the  reasons  it  was  not  necessary  to 


364          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

state,  for  every  one  understood;  the  justice  of  the 
sentence  no  one  considered.  There  are  Massachu 
setts  historians  who  regard  the  trial  and  banishment 
of  Mrs.  Hutchinson  as  a  stain  upon  the  Puritan 
Commonwealth  and  wish  it  could  be  expunged,  but 
they  are  oversensitive.  The  men  who  banished 
Mrs.  Hutchinson  were  men  of  the  seventeenth  cen 
tury  who  were  under  the  influence  of  their  age.  To 
have  expected  them  to  show  the  liberality  and 
tolerance  of  the  twentieth  century  would  have  been 
an  anachronism. 

The  great  Antinomian  controversy  and  the  ban 
ishment  of  Mistress  Anne  Hutchinson  stamp  the 
character  of  the  Puritan  and  the  peculiar  institution 
which  he  founded  in  Massachusetts.  It  revealed 
at  once  his  whole  theory  of  government  and  the 
relation  existing  between  the  church  and  the  state. 
It  is  perfectly  intelligible  and  entirely  logical  when 
we  realize  that  the  Bible  was  the  Puritan  Constitu 
tion  ;  it  is  mystifying  and  confusing  when  that  salient 
fact  has  not  been  grasped.  Doyle,  with  all  his 
learning  and  painstaking  research,  seems  to  have 
missed  the  key  to  the  Puritan  character,  without 
which  it  can  never  be  understood.  Referring  to 
the  church  at  Salem  having  appointed,  against  the 
remonstrances  of  the  General  Court,  Roger  Williams 
as  its  pastor,  Doyle  says:  "For  this  contumacy,  and 
for  its  supposed  complicity  in  Williams's  seditious 
courses,  Salem  was  punished  by  being  disfranchised 
till  it  made  an  apology.  Such  an  incident  oddly 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN     365 

illustrates  the  manner  in  which  civil  and  ecclesias 
tical  affairs  were  blended."  l 

The  incident  would  be  more  than  odd,  it  would 
be  impossible,  had  the  Puritan  been  content  to 
render  to  Csesar  the  things  that  were  Caesar's  and 
been  able  to  accept  the  modern  philosophy  that 
God  made  man,  but  man  made  the  State.  It  was 
impossible  for  the  Puritan  to  do  this,  and  in  his 
mind  there  was  never  any  conflict  between  human 
and  divine  law.  He  was  as  convinced  of  the  fal 
libility  of  human  action  when  it  opposed  the  pro 
visions  of  his  great  code  as  is  an  American  judge 
who  unhesitatingly  declares  a  statute  void  because 
it  violates  a  fundamental  inhibition  of  the  American 
Constitution.  The  Puritan  treatment  of  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson  shows  his  intense  narrowness  and  how 
deficient  he  was  in  the  saving  grace  of  charity.  He 
could  argue  for  days  over  the  meaning  of  an  obscure 
text  in  the  Bible,  but  his  heart  was  as  iron  when 
he  racked  the  woman  shortly  to  feel  the  pains  of 
maternity.  It  was  this  persecution  that,  unknown 
to  himself,  was  to  spread  colonization  and  make 
Massachusetts  the  mother  and  maker  of  states. 
Again  we  see  the  sempiternal  revolution  of  the 
wheel.  Driven  forth  by  religious  persecution,  the 
Puritan  builds  for  himself  a  new  state.  Driven  to 
persecution  by  the  narrowness  of  his  religion,  he 
in  turn  becomes  the  oppressor  and  furnishes  the 
impetus  for  the  forward  march  of  civilization. 

1  Doyle:  English  Colonies  in  America,  vol.  ii,  p.  122. 


366  THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

Some  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  adherents  founded 
towns  that  afterwards  became  the  state  of  New 
Hampshire.  Mrs.  Hutchinson  herself  and  a  con 
siderable  following  bought  from  the  Indians  the 
island  of  Aquidneck,  and  settlements  were  estab 
lished  at  Portsmouth  and  Newport,  which  later 
were  incorporated  with  Williams's  colony  at  Provi 
dence  and  became  in  time  the  modern  state  of 
Rhode  Island. 

Just  as  North  Carolina  was  to  Virginia  "Rogues' 
Harbor,"  where  the  outcasts  of  society  were  made 
welcome  and  no  one  was  so  inquisitive  as  to  ask 
the  latest  arrival  why  he  came  or  whether  he 
brought  his  real  name  with  him,  —  which  two  cen 
turies  later  was  the  etiquette  of  the  western  mining- 
camp,  where  personal  history  was  always  strictly 
tabooed,  —  Rhode  Island  was  to  the  other  New 
England  colonies  a  pit  of  abomination.  It  was 
called  in  derision  and  contempt  the  Isle  of  Errors 
and  the  Religious  Sink  of  New  England,  for  it  was 
the  only  place  where  every  odd  bit  of  theology  could 
be  found  and  prophets  could  safely  deliver  them 
selves  of  their  inspirations  and  new  sects  could 
be  founded  without  fear  of  punishment.  Cotton 
Mather,  who  was  not  overmuch  given  to  delicate  sar 
casm,  said  that  if  any  man  lost  his  religion,  he  could 
be  sure  to  find  it  in  Rhode  Island.  That  colony 
was  the  seventeenth-century  Hyde  Park  Sunday 
meetings  where  every  man  could  call  his  own 
audience  about  him  and  speak  to  his  heart's  content. 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN     367 

One  of  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  supporters  in  Aquid- 
neck  was  Samuel  Gorton,  who  bred  turbulence 
wherever  he  lodged.  He  was  "  a  proud  and  pes 
tilent  seducer,"  in  the  vigorous  language  of  that 
day,  which  had  no  reference  to  his  morals  but  to 
his  irrepressible  energy  in  spreading  his  horrific 
doctrines.  The  modern  biographer  would  term  him 
a  crotchety,  cantankerous  man,  decidedly  inclined 
toward  anarchy  and  inconveniently  assertive  of 
pretty  nearly  everything  that  society  disapproves. 
Doyle  describes  him  as  "a  singularly  puzzle-headed 
and  illiterate  man,  full  of  courage  and  energy,  and 
honest,  so  far  as  honesty  is  compatible  with  a  mor 
bid  passion  for  notoriety  which  is  gained  by  the  up 
holders  of  unpopular  views."  l  He  wrote  much,  but 
he  had  no  power  of  clear  expression  and  it  is  not 
easy  to  follow  his  argument. 

A  London  clothier,  he  set  up  as  a  preacher  without 
ordination  and  cherished  that  same  doctrine  of  di 
vine  inspiration  which  so  outraged  the  Puritans  of 
Massachusetts  when  proclaimed  by  Mrs.  Hutchin- 
son.  Coming  to  Plymouth,  he  soon  displayed  those 
qualities  that  made  him  for  many  years  a  thorn  in 
the  side  of  New  England.  One  account  has  it  that 
the  wife  of  his  pastor  preferred  his  teachings  to 
those  of  her  husband,  while  from  another  historian 
we  learn  that  with  more  zeal  than  tact  he  defended 
his  wife's  servant  who  had  been  severely  punished 
for  a  trifling  infraction  of  church  discipline.  He 

1  Doyle:  English  Colonies  in  America,  vol.  ii,  p.  187. 


368          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

found  it  wise  to  flee  Plymouth  and  seek  refuge 
at  Aquidneck,  where  he  celebrated  his  coming  by 
creating  a  schism  among  Mrs.  Hutchinson's  fol 
lowers,  which  led  to  the  founding  of  Portsmouth. 
Wherever  he  tarried  trouble  was  sure  to  abide, 
and  soon  Portsmouth  would  have  no  more  of  him, 
and  for  its  own  peace  flogged  him  and  cast  him  out. 
We  next  hear  of  him  at  Pawtuxet,  which  was  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  Providence,  where  even  the  broad- 
minded  and  tolerant  Roger  Williams  was  driven  to 
complaint.  Always  agitating,  his  hand  ever  against 
the  government,  "having  abused  high  and  low  at 
Aquidneck,"  Williams  plaintively  writes,  he  was 
now  "bewitching  and  madding  poor  Providence." 
It  is  difficult  to  understand  what  power  this  illiterate 
and  muddle-headed  man  possessed,  but  instead  of 
accepting  Fiske's  conclusion,  "probably  such  suc 
cess  as  Gorton  had  in  winning  followers  was  due 
to  the  mystical  rubbish  which  abounds  in  his  pages 
and  finds  in  a  modern  mind  no  doorway  through 
which  to  enter,"  *  it  is  more  probable  that  in  the 
revolt  against  theological  tyranny  and  a  dim  long 
ing  for  real  religious  freedom  is  the  explanation  to 
be  found.  Williams,  true  to  his  principles,  although 
disapproving  of  Gorton,  would  not  silence  him, 
but  when  he  refused  to  submit  to  the  authority  of 
the  magistrates,  some  of  the  leading  citizens  of 
Providence  appealed  to  Massachusetts  for  advice 
and  assistance  in  dealing  with  this  disturber  of  the 

1  Fiske :  The  Beginnings  of  New  England,  p.  167. 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN     369 

peace.  It  is  not  necessary  to  follow  in  detail  future 
events.  Gorton  and  some  of  his  followers,  after  a 
stout  resistance,  were  captured  by  an  armed  force 
and  taken  to  Massachusetts  and  sentenced  to  work 
in  irons  during  the  pleasure  of  the  court  and 
strictly  forbidden  to  communicate  with  any  one 
except  the  elders  and  the  assistants.  But  Puritan 
obstinacy  was  more  than  matched  by  the  stubborn 
ness  of  Gorton  who  doubtless  knew  his  Epictetus 
and  was  strengthened  by  the  philosopher's  defiance. 

Despite  his  fetters  Gorton  continued  to  propagate 
his  heresies,  and  he  was  like  to  have  bewitched 
Massachusetts  as  he  had  poor  Providence  had  not 
the  court  amended  the  sentence  to  banishment 
from  the  colony  on  pain  of  death.  To  Aquidneck, 
where  he  had  abused  high  and  low,  he  returned, 
and  because  he  was  a  victim  of  the  religious  perse 
cution  of  Massachusetts  he  was  received  with 
sympathy. 

I  have  outlined  the  adventurous  career  of  this 
tailor-preacher  and  mystic  because  it  was  the  asylum 
that  Rhode  Island  offered  to  discordant  religious 
elements  that  gave  it  a  character  unlike  those  of  the 
other  New  England  colonies  and  made  it  possible 
for  the  theocracy  of  New  England  to  be  broken 
down;  which  was  necessary  if  men  were  to  gain 
intellectual  freedom  and  escape  from  the  stag 
nation  of  the  narrow  rule  of  a  creed  that  was  a 
bar  to  their  highest  spiritual  development.  Under 
the  rule  of  the  theocracy  the  minds  of  men  could 


370          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

only  expand  along  certain  lines,  but  perfect  devel 
opment  was  impossible.  Great  and  wonderful  as 
was  the  work  wrought  by  the  theocracy  and  the 
character  which  it  created,  there  came  a  time  when 
instead  of  making  men  strong  it  weakened  them  by 
its  intolerance  and  its  rigid  command  of  blind  obe 
dience;  and  the  power  of  the  theocracy  began  to 
crumble  when  the  teachings  of  Roger  Williams  and 
his  disciples  took  root  and  theological  disputes  no 
longer  held  the  first  place  as  the  highest  expression 
of  intellect. 

When,  in  the  progress  of  society,  Buckle  says,  its 
theological  element  begins  to  decay,  the  ardor  with 
which  religious  disputes  were  once  conducted  be 
comes  sensibly  weakened.  That  time,  in  America, 
had  not  yet  come,  but  it  was  foreshadowed;  and  it 
was  because  the  narrow  theology  of  Massachusetts 
broke  down  before  spreading  its  destructive  influ 
ence  over  a  wider  area  and  becoming  indoctrinated 
in  the  race  that  it  was  possible  for  the  Americans  to 
be  what  they  are  —  liberal  in  religion  and  thought, 
with  a  speculative  audacity  that  has  made  them 
ready  to  embrace  every  new  idea  and  explore  every 
new  realm  of  mind  or  deed.  They  were  not  clogged 
by  hampering  tradition,  and  of  all  tradition  an 
intensely  formalistic  religion  is  the  most  impeditive. 
Buckle  adds  in  the  paragraph  which  has  already 
been  quoted  —  and  it  concisely  reveals  the  change 
produced  in  the  Massachusetts  character  by  the 
displacement  of  theology  as  the  highest  expression 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN    371 

of  intellectual  activity  —  that  "  the  most  advanced 
intellects  are  the  first  to  feel  the  growing  indif 
ference,  and,  therefore,  they  are  also  the  first  to 
scrutinize  real  events  with  that  inquisitive  eye  which 
their  predecessors  had  reserved  for  religious  specu 
lations.  This  is  a  great  turning-point  in  the  his 
tory  of  every  civilized  nation.  From  this  moment 
theological  heresies  become  less  frequent,  and  liter 
ary  heresies  become  more  common.  From  this 
moment,  the  spirit  of  inquiry  and  of  doubt  fastens 
itself  upon  every  department  of  knowledge,  and 
begins  that  great  career  of  conquest,  in  which  by 
every  succeeding  discovery  the  power  and  dignity 
of  man  are  increased,  while  at  the  same  time  most 
of  his  opinions  are  disturbed,  and  many  of  them 
are  destroyed;  until,  in  the  march  of  this  vast  but 
noiseless  revolution  the  stream  of  tradition  is,  as 
it  were,  interrupted,  the  influence  of  ancient  author 
ity  is  subverted,  and  the  human  mind,  waxing  in 
strength,  learns  to  rely  upon  its  own  resources,  and 
to  throw  off  incumbrances  by  which  the  freedom  of 
its  movements  had  long  been  impaired."  1 

Gorton,  who  served  a  purpose,  was  an  ill-bal 
anced  and  undisciplined  man;  Williams,  whose 
light  still  burns  with  undiminished  brilliance,  was 
of  splendid  sanity.  In  that  heterogeneous  mixture 
of  Antinomians  and  Gortonites  and  Quakers  and 
other  strange  conglomerations  of  sects  there  was 
a  serious  element  of  liberal  thinkers;  men  and 

1  Buckle:  History  of  Civilization  in  England,  vol.  i,  p.  554. 


372          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

women  were  groping  in  the  dark  to  free  themselves 
from  the  slavery  and  superstition  that  had  for 
centuries  overlaid  thought,  but  which  the  Refor 
mation  had  begun  to  clear  away.  They  were  sick, 
sick  unto  death,  of  the  mockery  of  Christ;  of  the 
sham  and  pretence  of  the  church;  of  religion  that 
was  forever  preaching  damnation  but  offered  never 
a  word  of  hope;  that  crucified  but  bathed  no 
wounds;  that  to  the  soul-thirsty  gave  vinegar  and 
tantalized  with  a  cup  of  cold  water.  Long  had  they 
been  bound  only  to  find  themselves  free  in  a  wilder 
ness;  they  were  longing  to  use  their  freedom,  but 
they  did  not  know  how  to  exert  their  strength.  It 
was  natural,  when  restraint  had  been  cast  off,  that 
they,  not  having  experienced  that  long  discipline 
which  hardens  character  and  brings  it  under  con 
trol,  should  go  to  extremes  and  take  up  with  every 
vagary  that  promised  the  intellectual  liberty  they 
so  ardently  craved.  Almost  each  man  felt  he  was 
privileged  to  create  his  own  moral  code.  Some 
were  opposed  to  all  forms  of  government  because 
it  elevated  men  in  authority  over  their  fellows,  and 
they  were  able  to  prove  to  their  own  satisfaction 
that  Christ  taught  that  all  men  stood  equal  before 
Him.  It  was  sufficient  for  a  man  to  refuse  to  obey 
a  law  because  he  was  unable  to  reconcile  it  with 
his  conscience.  Ingenuity  could  find  in  the  Bible 
that  a  man  was  permitted  one  wife  or  many.  There 
was,  we  are  told,  either  too  much  marriage  or  too 
little.  It  was  a  strange,  tumultuous,  undisciplined, 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN     373 

muddle-headed  band  of  extremists,  but  with  the 
germ  of  an  idea  in  their  not  over-logical  brains, 
that  the  tyranny  and  precise  formalism  of  Massa 
chusetts  drove  to  seek  refuge  in  Rhode  Island. 

Out  of  that  ruck  rises  the  majestic  figure  of 
Roger  Williams,  as  impressive  in  its  dignity  and 
strength  of  character  and  liberality  two  hundred 
years  in  advance  of  his  time  as  Everest  towering  over 
the  plains  in  the  mystery  of  its  solitary  grandeur. 
Williams  was  able  to  distinguish  between  liberty 
and  license,  to  grant  freedom  to  all  men,  and  yet 
to  require  the  obedience  of  all  to  the  discipline  of 
law  and  the  will  of  society.  In  a  letter  that  has  often 
been  quoted  he  defended  himself  from  the  charge 
that  the  freedom  he  contended  for  led  to  licentious 
ness  and  every  kind  of  disorder,  and  used  the  well- 
known  illustration  of  the  captain  and  the  ship. 
'There  goes  many  a  ship  to  sea,"  he  wrote,  "with 
many  hundred  souls  in  one  ship,  whose  weal  and 
woe  is  common ;  and  is  a  true  picture  of  a  common 
wealth,  or  a  human  combination,  or  society.  It 
hath  fallen  out  sometimes,  that  both  Papists  and 
Protestants,  Jews  and  Turks,  may  be  embarked  in 
one  ship ;  upon  which  supposal  I  affirm,  that  all  the 
liberty  of  conscience  that  ever  I  pleaded  for,  turns 
upon  these  two  hinges:  that  none  of  the  Papists, 
Protestants,  Jews,  or  Turks,  be  forced  to  come  to 
the  ship's  prayers  or  worship,  nor  compelled  from 
their  own  particular  prayers  or  worship,  if  they 
practice  any."  Yet  notwithstanding  this  liberty,  he 


374          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

maintains,  "the  commander  of  this  ship  ought  to 
command  the  ship's  course,  yea,  and  also  command 
that  justice,  peace  and  sobriety  be  kept  and  prac 
tised,  both  among  the  seamen  and  all  the  passengers. 
If  any  of  the  seamen  refuse  to  perform  their  service, 
or  passengers  to  pay  their  freight;  if  any  refuse  to 
help  in  person  or  purse,  towards  the  common 
charges  or  defence;  if  any  refuse  to  obey  the  com 
mon  laws  and  orders  of  the  ship,  concerning  their 
common  peace  and  preservation;  if  any  shall  rise 
up  and  mutiny  against  their  commanders  and  offi 
cers;  if  any  shall  preach  or  write,  that  there  ought 
to  be  no  commanders  nor  officers,  because  all  are 
equal  in  Christ,  therefore  no  masters  nor  officers,  no 
laws,  nor  orders,  no  corrections  nor  punishments; 
I  say  I  never  denied,  but  in  such  cases,  whatever  is 
pretended,  the  commander  or  commanders  may 
judge,  resist,  compel,  and  punish  such  transgressors, 
according  to  their  deserts  and  merits." l  If  Williams 
had  done  nothing  more  than  to  write  this  letter,  it 
would  have  established  his  perdurable  fame. 

Massachusetts  was  the  attempt  to  establish  a 
political  community  on  a  basis  of  religious  tyranny, 
an  experiment  often  before  made;  Rhode  Island, 
much  more  wonderful,  was  to  see  for  the  first  time 
a  political  organization  foundationed  on  religious 
liberty,  which  succeeding  was  powerfully  to  affect 
the  thought  not  only  of  America  but  of  the  whole 

1  Arnold:  History  of  Rhode  Island,  vol.  i,  p.  225;  Lamed,  vol.  iv, 
p.  2713. 


RELIGIOUS  FREEDOM  IS  BORN    375 

world;  that  was  to  free  men  not  alone  from  the 
thraldom  of  the  church,  but  was  to  liberate  them 
from  political  slavery;  that  was  to  spread  demo 
cratic  institutions;  for  it  was  only  when  the  power 
of  the  autocracy  of  the  church  and  the  oligarchy 
of  an  aristocratic  political  class  was  broken  down 
that  it  became  possible  for  democracy  to  take 
root.  It  is  a  striking  contrast  this,  Massachusetts 
wedded  to  its  theocracy,  and  Rhode  Island,  sepa 
rated  by  no  impassable  natural  or  artificial  barriers, 
under  the  very  eyes  of  Massachusetts,  peopled  by 
her  own  people,  inspiring  liberty.  America  was 
wide  enough  to  shelter  all;  there  was  room  here 
for  the  narrow-minded  and  stern  Endicott  and  the 
broad  and  benignant  Williams;  it  was  the  fore 
runner  of  American  liberality. 

It  was  an  experiment  scoffed  at,  and  it  was 
prophesied  that  a  scheme  so  revolutionary  would  be 
of  short  duration.  But  it  endured.  Like  every  great 
movement  that  has  influenced  the  course  of  civiliza 
tion,  it  encountered  the  contempt  and  opposition  of 
the  adherents  of  older  institutions.  Those  institu 
tions  absorb  the  highest  talent,  the  greatest  ability, 
all  the  power  that  comes  from  wealth  and  learning ; 
and  the  cohesive  strength  of  men  leagued  to  main 
tain  an  existing  state  of  society  has  a  disciplinary 
effect  on  those  who  adhere  to  its  conventions  and 
who  are  contemptuous  of  the  disorganized  rabble 
which  the  new  order  at  first  attracts.  There  are  in 
every  such  movement,  three  successive  stages  which 


376          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

are  common  to  all  social  revolutions:  first,  unre 
strained  enthusiasm,  which  is  its  strength;  then 
more  practical  considerations  prevail,  and,  finally, 
if  the  revolution  is  to  accomplish  its  work,  disci 
pline  is  enforced  and  individual  enthusiasm  subor 
dinates  itself  to  social  regulation. 

The  theocracy  of  Massachusetts,  the  aristocratic 
institutions  of  Virginia,  the  alien  customs  of  New 
York,  have  disappeared,  but  the  gospel  spread  by 
Roger  Williams  lives. 

Rhode  Island  interests  us  not  at  all  for  any  con 
tribution  it  made  to  the  constitutional  struggle  or 
the  development  of  the  spirit  of  constitutional 
government.  It  defied  no  proprietors  nor  royal 
governors.  It  did  not  threaten  the  authority  of  the 
King.  It  took  no  part  in  upholding  the  funda 
mental  principle  of  English  political  liberty,  that  in 
the  control  of  the  purse  is  the  real  sovereignty  of 
the  people.  It  gave  birth  to  no  new  social  condi 
tions  as  did  Virginia  and  Maryland  and  the  other 
southern  colonies.  It  injected  no  new  strain  into  the 
English  character  as  did  Puritan  Massachusetts. 
But  no  survey  of  American  psychology  is  complete 
without  Rhode  Island,  where  was  laid  the  founda 
tion  of  that  liberty  of  conscience  and  religious  free 
dom  which  have  had  so  much  to  do  in  making  the 
American  character. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT 

OF  the  thirteen  original  colonies  we  have  thus 
far  dealt  with  eight,  each  of  which  contributed  a 
distinct  element  to  the  making  of  what  was  later 
to  become  the  American  nation  and  left  its  peculiar 
characteristics  upon  the  psychology  of  the  race,  or 
laid  that  system  of  popular  and  democratic  govern 
ment  that  logically  and  irresistibly  developed  into  the 
political  system  on  which  the  American  Republic 
rests.  The  five  remaining  colonies  —  New  Hamp 
shire,  New  Jersey,  Delaware,  New  York,  and  Penn 
sylvania  —  demand  little  attention  at  our  hands  at 
this  stage  of  the  inquiry.  It  is  true  that  of  those 
five  colonies  two  were  to  become  the  most  important 
and  influential  states  of  the  Union  and  were  in  the 
second  period  of  American  politico-psychology  what 
Massachusetts  and  Virginia  were  in  the  first;  but 
while  Virginia  and  Massachusetts  were  the  mother 
who  gave  birth  to  a  race  of  giants  and  suckled  them. 
New  York  and  Pennsylvania  were  father  and 
tutor  to  teach  them  strength  and  how  to  walk  fear 
lessly.  It  will  perhaps  appear  remarkable  to  him 
who  has  read  American  history  and  ignored  its 
psychology  that  this  assertion  should  be  made,  but 
if  we  call  the  roll  of  those  eight  colonies  whose 


378          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

establishment  has  formed  the  theme  of  the  pre 
ceding  pages,  we  shall  see  how  essential  they  were 
to  the  first  stage  of  American  development,  and  how 
little  influence  New  York  and  Pennsylvania  exer 
cised  at  that  time. 

Let  us  briefly  review  what  each  contributed. 
Massachusetts  gave  Puritanism  and  its  institutions, 
the  spirit  of  which  still  lives;  Virginia  and  Mary 
land  and  the  other  southern  colonies,  which  were 
their  offshoots,  the  institution  of  slavery  and  a  social 
system  that  produced  momentous  political  conse 
quences  which,  modified  by  later  economic  and 
political  causes,  have  influenced  the  American  peo 
ple  and  make  the  South  to-day  different  in  thought 
and  manner  from  the  North  or  the  rest  of  the  Eng 
lish-speaking  world ;  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island, 
the  seed  of  Massachusetts,  nurtured  more  benig- 
nantly,  were  the  beginnings  of  that  great  liberty  of 
conscience  which  is  the  just  pride  of  Americans. 
Now  if  we  turn  to  New  York,  we  find  that  it  laid 
no  foundation  on  which  has  been  erected  a  diutur- 
nal  structure.  The  civilization  of  the  Dutch  suc 
cumbed  before  a  more  virile  race,  a  race  endowed 
with  a  peculiar  genius  to  govern  and  leave  its 
ineffaceable  mark.  All  that  the  Dutch  brought  to 
America — language,  customs,  political  principles  — 
has  been  overlaid  by  the  speech  and  institutions  and 
political  philosophy  of  the  English,  as  Herculaneum 
withered  under  the  scorching  ashes  of  Vesuvius,  and 
became  merely  a  memory  on  which  a  newer  and 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     379 

more  lasting  civilization  was  reared.  Search  as  we 
may,  we  can  find  no  trace  of  the  Dutch  strain  or  that 
the  Dutch  left  any  indesinent  impress  upon  the 
American  character  or  were  able  to  modify  a  con 
quering  race  or  impose  upon  it  their  own  civili 
zation.  We  have  seen  that  the  Indian  stimulated 
certain  qualities  of  the  Englishman;  the  influence 
exercised  by  the  negro  on  the  character  of  the  white 
man  has  been  referred  to  and  we  shall  make  more 
detailed  reference  to  it  later;  but  the  Dutch  came 
and  went  like  visitors  in  a  household,  whose  little 
peculiarities  are  the  only  thing  by  which  they  are 
remembered,  but  from  whom  nothing  has  been 
learned.  The  early  colonial  history  of  Pennsylvania 
is  no  less  barren  of  results,  redeemed  only  by  the 
romantic  personality  of  Penn  and  the  Quaker 
invasion. 

New  York  as  a  Dutch  colony  explains  why 
Holland  failed  where  England  succeeded,  and  it 
elucidates  how  it  became  possible  for  England 
to  secure  the  continent  while  France  and  Spain 
labored  to  no  purpose.  The  English  were  coloni 
zers  as  well  as  traders,  the  Dutch  were  traders  only ; 
they  had  no  genius  for  over-sea  empire-building. 
Where  the  English  planted  themselves  there  imme 
diately  was  instituted  a  political  system  that  begat 
a  spirit  of  loyalty  to  English  institutions  and  at  the 
same  time  created  an  intense  spirit  of  independence 
and  pride  in  the  work  of  their  own  hands  and  the 
colony  which  they  had  created.  With  the  Dutch  it 


380          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

was  different.  Neither  the  States  General  nor  the 
Dutch  West  Indian  Company  had  dealt  with  the 
New  Netherlands  to  foster  any  spirit  of  loyalty,  and 
it  was  with  indifference  that  its  people  regarded 
the  political  changes  that  made  them  at  one  time 
owe  allegiance  to  Holland  and  later  to  England. 
"Nothing  could  show  more  strongly  the  lack  of  any 
vigorous  sense  of  nationality  than  the  passivity  with 
which  the  Dutch  settlers  suffered  themselves  to  be 
handed  backwards  and  forwards  without  protest  or 
expression  of  interest."  1  One  cannot  picture  such 
a  thing  in  Massachusetts  or  Virginia;  it  would  be 
difficult  to  imagine  those  stubborn  Puritans  or  those 
fiery  Virginians  tamely  submitting  to  be  treated  as 
chattels  and  like  fortresses  or  munitions  of  war  the 
spoil  of  the  conqueror.  There  would  have  been  an 
uprising  to  tax  all  the  energy  of  the  United  Pro 
vinces  to  suppress. 

The  marked  difference  in  the  character  of  the 
Dutch  and  the  English  and  the  proof,  if  additional 
proof  is  wanting,  that  it  was  the  English  and  not 
the  Dutch  who  laid  the  foundation  of  American 
psychology,  is  to  be  found  in  the  political  ties  that 
bound  the  colonists  to  England,  which  led  to  their 
independence  and  their  birth  as  a  nation,  as  con 
trasted  with  the  slight  importance  the  New  Nether- 
land  settlers  attached  to  their  political  relationship 
to  the  home  government.  The  Puritan  settlers, 
Goldwin  Smith,  says,  "in  common  with  the  other 

1  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  vii,  p.  41. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     381 

colonists  of  the  period,  retained  not  only  their  love 
of  the  old  land,  but  their  political  tie  to  it.  They 
deemed  themselves  still  liegemen  of  a  sovereign  on 
the  other  side  of  the  Atlantic.  This  created  a  rela 
tion  false  from  the  beginning.  Herein  lay  the  fatal 
seeds  of  misunderstanding,  of  encroachment  on  the 
side  of  the  home  government,  of  revolt  on  that  of 
the  growing  colony,  and  ultimately  revolution"; 
and  he  goes  on  to  say  that  "the  English  colony 
unhappily  was  a  dependency,  and  when  it  grew 
strong  enough  to  spurn  dependence  there  was  a 
bond  to  be  broken  which  was  not  likely  to  be  broken 
without  violence  and  a  breach  of  affection."1  It  is 
to  be  regretted  that  such  a  clear  thinker  as  Goldwin 
Smith  should  have  failed  to  comprehend  the  exact 
nature  of  the  relationship  that  existed  between 
the  English  colonists  and  the  mother  country,  the 
mental  attitude  of  his  countrymen  both  at  home 
and  in  America,  and  the  causes  that  produced  the 
discontent  of  the  colonists ;  and  it  is  only  with  that 
knowledge  that  it  becomes  possible  to  understand 
why  the  Dutch  accomplished  nothing. 

In  previous  chapters  I  have  endeavored  to  cor 
rect  the  widespread  but  erroneous  impression  that 
the  Englishman  when  he  emigrated  to  America, 
whether  as  a  Puritan  colonist  or  a  southern  planter 
or  landholder,  divested  himself  of  his  national 
ity  and  ceased  to  remain  an  Englishman.  But  the 
truth  is  that  in  all  things,  political  principles  no  less 

1  Smith:  The  United  States,  p.  6. 


382          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

than  in  his  manners  and  customs  and  his  religion, 
he  was  as  much  the  Englishman  in  Massachusetts 
or  in  Virginia  as  he  had  been  in  Lincolnshire  or  in 
Suffolk.  These  Englishmen  did  not  merely  "  deem  " 
themselves  liegemen  of  a  sovereign;  they  were. 
Because  they  lived  in  Virginia  they  were  no  less 
Englishmen  than  those  of  their  kin  who  were  still 
living  in  the  ancestral  halls  of  Kent;  distance 
neither  broke  nor  weakened  the  tie.  It  was  because 
they  were  Englishmen,  it  was  because  they  were 
Englishmen  and  had  not  ceased  to  be  Englishmen, 
that  they  insisted  upon  the  same  rights  and  privi 
leges,  the  same  liberty,  the  same  safeguards,  the 
same  political  freedom  that  were  enjoyed  by  English 
men  elsewhere,  that  inherently  belonged  to  the  Eng 
lishman  whether  he  acknowledged  allegiance  to 
his  sovereign  in  London  or  in  Jamestown.  In  the 
Cambridge  synod  of  1646  the  ministers  defined  the 
relations  of  Massachusetts  toward  England  in  these 
words:  "We  depend  upon  the  state  of  England  for 
protection  and  immunities  of  Englishmen."  l  "  The 
complaints  of  the  people  in  the  colonies,"  Straus 
says,  "  were  at  no  time  because  of  the  form  of  their 
government,  or  that  of  the  mother  country,  but 
because  of  the  encroachments  upon,  and  utter 
disregard  of,  the  natural  rights,  privileges  and  im 
munities  to  which  they  deemed  themselves  entitled, 
equally  with  those  residing  in  England."  2 

1  Adams :  The  Emancipation  of  Massachusetts,  p.  90. 

2  Straus:  The  Origin  of  Republican  Form  of  Government  in  the  United 
States  of  America,  p.  3. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     383 

We  have  seen  that  in  the  colonies,  almost  from 
the  very  beginning,  there  were  continual  uprisings 
of  the  people  to  resist  the  encroachments  of  their 
governors  or  to  assert  their  prerogatives ;  they  were 
defiant  not  only  of  the  local  authorities  but  of  the 
Crown  itself  when  they  believed  themselves  the 
victims  of  oppression  or  tyranny.  But  it  created 
no  false  relation ;  it  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  relation 
perfectly  understood  and  perfectly  satisfactory  ac 
cording  to  the  spirit  of  the  age;  and  of  all  things 
the  historian  must  avoid  the  error  of  visualizing  the 
past  by  the  false  light  of  the  present  —  false  because 
modern  clearness  of  thought  magnifies  and  distorts ; 
it  is  too  cruelly  keen  to  make  allowances  for  only  a 
partially  developed  concept  of  the  philosophy  which 
men  once  accepted  as  final.  Bacon's  rebellion,  for 
example,  was  no  more  an  effort  to  "spurn  depend 
ence"  than  the  uprising  led  by  Wat  Tyler  was  an 
attempt  to  make  Kent  or  Hartfordshire  independ 
ent  principalities;  but  both  were  the  expression  of 
popular  discontent  and  were  the  only  means  then 
known  to  correct  grievances,  to  readjust  a  burden 
some  and  unjust  system  of  taxation,  and  to  secure 
the  reaffirmation  of  rights  which  were  the  immemo 
rial  privileges  of  Englishmen.  Just  as  Tyler  rode 
at  the  head  of  his  motley  rabble  three  centuries 
before  Bacon  aroused  the  spirit  of  Virginia,  so 
Cromwell  marshaled  his  hosts  nearly  a  century 
before  Washington  created  an  army.  In  searching 
for  a  precedent  the  Englishmen  of  America  found 


384          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

the  Grand  Remonstrance  framed  by  the  Puritans 
of  England,  and  they  indicted  their  sovereign  with 
the  Declaration  of  Independence.  But  in  neither 
case  was  it  a  deliberate  attempt  to  break  a  bond 
because  it  was  politically  galling.  An  English  sov 
ereign  lost  his  head  because  he  defied  the  liberties 
of  the  people  and  attempted  to  set  up  an  au 
tocracy;  a  later  English  sovereign  lost  his  colonies 
because  he  was  deaf  to  remonstrance  and  clung  to 
the  exploded  idea  that  Englishmen  might  be  taxed 
without  their  consent.  In  the  time  of  Cromwell 
England  was  in  spirit  a  republic.  The  English 
colonies  had  long  been  republican  not  alone  in 
spirit  but  in  the  form  of  their  governments,  and  in 
that  mood  it  needed  only  a  choice  bit  of  rhetoric 
to  make  them  cast  out  even  the  semblance  of 
monarchical  institutions  and  openly  embrace  that 
form  of  government  for  which  their  training  and 
their  natural  inclinations  had  for  so  long  prepared 
them. 

Returning  to  those  Dutch  settlers  who  planted 
themselves  on  the  Hudson,  we  see  how  they  differed 
from  the  men  of  English  stock  who  rooted  them 
selves  in  the  North.  While  English  governors  and 
their  courts  were  ruling  with  a  firm  and,  in  many 
cases,  oppressive  hand,  which  made  men  more 
determined  than  ever  to  resist  encroachments  and 
widen  their  liberty,  Dutch  stadtholders  were  en 
gaged  in  the  ridiculous  pastime  of  governing  by 
paper  proclamations,  which  appealed  to  stolid 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     385 

humor  and  were  to  be  laughed  at  over  the  com 
forting  contentment  of  pipes.  The  London  Com 
pany  was  invested  with  political  as  well  as  commer 
cial  powers;  Baltimore's  charter,  similar  to  that  of 
every  other  English  proprietor,  contained  a  dis 
tinct  recognition  of  the  political  rights  of  the 
settlers;  but  the  company  of  Dutch  merchants 
which  was  granted  by  the  States  General  the  exclu 
sive  monopoly  of  trading  in  the  New  Netherlands 
was  under  no  such  restrictions,  and  the  Dutch 
temperament,  unlike  the  English,  was  too  sluggish 
and  too  unimaginative  to  make  them  passionately 
demand  their  political  independence.  "As  a  crea 
ture  of  the  States  General,  the  West  India  Company, 
the  declared  rival  of  the  French  for  the  Canadian 
fur  trade,  managed  affairs  in  the  colony  with  an 
iron  hand.  Scant  consideration  was  given  the 
settler.  The  policy  of  the  company  was  purely 
commercial."1 

It  was  the  English  Governor  Fletcher  who  taught 
these  Dutchmen  the  meaning  of  political  liberty 
when  he  said  to  them:  "There  are  none  of  you  but 
are  big  with  the  privileges  of  Englishmen  and 
Magna  Charta."  It  has  been  well  said  by  an  Ameri 
can  author  that  the  Dutch  fought  heroically  for 
their  independence  against  the  Spaniards,  and  won 
the  gratitude  of  the  civilized  world  by  driving  him 
out  of  Northern  Europe.  But,  their  independence 

1  Military  Minutes  of  the  Council  of  Appointment  of  the  State  of  New 
York,  vol.  i,  p.  2. 


386          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

once  attained,  they  settled  down  to  the  substantial 
enjoyment  of  it  and  the  commerce  of  the  Indian 
seas,  and  have  remained  in  that  happy  state  ever 
since.  They  had  no  passion  for  conquest,  and  were 
not  wandering  over  the  earth  with  empires  in  their 
brains,  like  the  English. ' 

In  the  charter  of  the  Dutch  East  and  West  India 
Companies  2  the  right  of  the  colonists  —  or  it  would 
be  more  proper  to  call  them  traders,  because  they 
were  not  colonists  in  any  real  sense  of  the  word — to 
maintain  self-government  was  so  completely  ignored 
that  no  provision  was  made  for  popular  assemblies 
or  legislatures,  nor  were  the  colonists  permitted  the 
right  to  vote,  and  this  effort  of  the  home  govern 
ment  to  keep  their  children  in  a  state  of  perpetual 
tutelage  aroused  not  even  passive  resistance.  We 
have  only  to  contrast  the  rights  of  the  English 
colonists  with  the  withholding  of  all  rights  from  the 
Dutch  colonists  to  see  how  little  foundation  there 
is  for  the  oft-repeated  assertion  that  it  is  to  the 
Dutch  Americans  owe  the  origin  of  a  Republican 
form  of  government  or  the  institutions  on  which 
American  society  is  founded.  The  laws  under 
which  the  English  colonists  lived  were  laws  framed 
by  themselves,  and  whether  good  or  bad,  at  least 
they  had  the  satisfaction  of  knowing  that  they  were 
their  own  work,  that  the  code  they  erected  for  them- 

1  Fisher:  Men,  Women,  and  Manners  in  Colonial  Times,  vol.  ii,  p.  15. 

2  For  the  full  text  of  the  charter  of  the  West  India  Company  see  Van 
Rennselaer  Bowier  Manuscripts,  p.  87  et  seq.,  and  the  Charter  of  Freedoms 
and  Exemptions,  p.  137  et  seq. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT  387 

selves  was  the  expression  of  their  own  requirements 
and  their  own  moral  nature.  If  they  branded  and 
imprisoned  and  maimed  and  hanged,  it  was  because 
the  welfare  of  the  community,  as  they  considered  it, 
demanded  drastic  discipline.  Even  their  tyranny 
was  intelligent  and  was  not  the  mere  caprice  of  a 
William  the  Testy.  It  was  discipline  enforced  by 
a  majority  of  the  community  and  not  by  governors 
whose  actions  they  were  unable  to  control;  who 
were  as  deaf  to  public  opinion  as  the  Spanish 
governors  were  to  the  meek  protests  of  the  Indians. 
The  Dutch  governors,  Irving  says  in  that  most  de 
lightful  of  all  books,  enjoyed  that  uncontrolled 
authority  vested  in  all  commanders  of  distant 
colonies  or  territories.  They  were,  in  manner,  abso 
lute  despots  in  their  little  domains,  lording  it,  if  so 
disposed,  over  both  law  and  gospel,  and  accountable 
to  none  but  to  the  mother  country;  which  it  is  well 
known  is  astonishingly  deaf  to  all  complaints 
against  its  governors,  provided  they  discharge  the 
main  duties  of  their  station  —  squeezing  out  a 
good  revenue.1  Whatever  was  wrong  could  be 
corrected  with  a  proclamation.  If  pestiferous  New 
Englanders  or  trespassing  Swedes  invaded  the  terri 
tory  of  the  New  Netherlands,  if  sailors  were  unruly 
or  there  was  too  much  private  traffic  in  furs,  if 
Dutch  hausvrows  were  too  prone  to  gossip,  the 
Testy  one  retired  to  the  solitude  of  his  cabinet  and 
brought  forth  a  proclamation  which  he  issued  with 

1  Irving:  A  History  of  New  York,  p.  167. 


388          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

sublime  faith  in  its  potency  as  a  cure  for  all  evils. 
Nothing  destroyed  his  belief  in  the  efficacy  of  his 
Edicts.  Contrast  with  that  the  stern  methods  of  the 
English  both  north  and  south,  and  the  measures 
they  adopted  to  make  men  and  women  walk  in  the 
narrow  way  and  respect  lawful  authority.  It  was 
only  after  Kieft  was  dismissed  that  there  was  some 
semblance  of  breaking  the  autocratic  power  of  the 
governor  by  the  appointment  of  a  supreme  council, 
and  then  it  began  to  penetrate  the  heads  of  these 
incompetent  colonizers  that  they  could  learn  from 
the  English.  It  was  recommended  that  the  Dutch 
should  be  encouraged  to  settle  in  towns  and  villages 
"as  the  English  are  in  the  habit  of  doing,"  which  is 
still  further  testimony  that  in  the  art  of  colonization 
it  was  from  the  Dutch  the  English  learned  little  if 
anything,  while  it  is  to  the  English  the  Dutch  owe 
much. 

Equally  fallacious  is  the  widespread  impression 
that  the  Dutch  were  extremely  liberal  in  religious 
belief,  and  that  the  same  spirit  which  made  them 
offer  asylum  to  the  Separatists  in  Holland  con 
trolled  them  in  their  settlements  in  the  New  World. 
The  Dutch  of  the  New  Netherlands  were  no  less 
narrow  in  the  maintenance  of  one  religion  than 
were  the  Puritans  of  Massachusetts  Bay  in  their 
attempts  to  suppress  the  "pestilent  seducer."  The 
Reformed  Church  was  alone  recognized ;  unlicensed 
preachers  were  suppressed  and  if  they  persisted, 
their  contumacy  was  punished  by  fine  and  impris- 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  GAME  AND  WENT     389 

onment;  with  the  exception  of  Massachusetts,  no 
where  was  such  harshness  meted  out  to  the  Quakers 
as  in  New  Amsterdam.  Perhaps  nothing  better 
demonstrates  the  utter  incapacity  of  the  Dutch  for 
colonization  and  their  unfitness  to  found  a  colonial 
empire  than  their  sterility  and  the  slow  growth  of 
population.  After  they  had  been  in  possession  for 
more  than  forty  years  of  the  fairest  part  of  America 
they  numbered  but  ten  thousand,  while  at  that  time 
the  Puritan  colonies,  with  a  much  less  fertile  soil  to 
sustain  them  and  climatic  rigors  to  contend  with 
which  sorely  tried  them,  could  count  their  people 
at  not  less  than  fifty  thousand.  It  was  impossible 
for  the  Dutch  to  have  peopled  a  continent. 

In  another  way  the  difference  between  the  Dutch 
and  English  character  is  illustrated.  The  heart  of 
the  Dutch  province  was  Manhattan  Island  with  a 
far-flung  outpost  at  Albany,  and  between  were 
scattered  farms  and  straggling  settlements.  Rela 
tively  to  that  day  Albany  was  as  remote  from  New 
York  as  London  is  from  St.  Petersburg  in  ours ;  in 
one  sense  the  distance  was  greater,  as  there  was  no 
telegraph  to  bridge  space  and  destroy  time;  there 
was  no  constant  stream  of  travelers  flowing  back 
and  forth  to  bring  half  the  world  in  intimate  contact. 
Judging  by  what  happened  in  New  England,  seeing 
what  took  place  in  the  South,  we  are  warranted  in 
believing  that  had  the  English  been  the  first  settlers 
on  Manhattan  Island  and  established  an  outpost  up 
the  river  at  Albany,  it  would  have  been  only  a  short 


390          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

time  before  those  Albanian  Englishmen  would  have 
cut  loose  from  the  nominal  control  of  New  York  and 
set  up  a  government  of  their  own,  in  the  same  way 
that  Connecticut  and  New  Hampshire  and  Rhode 
Island  came  into  existence.  Englishmen  would  have 
felt  the  imperious  necessity  of  governing  themselves 
and  being  their  own  political  masters,  but  the  Dutch 
had  no  such  impulse.  They  were  quite  content  with 
their  lot;  trade  they  understood,  but  political 
science  did  not  vex  them;  and  whether  they  were 
ruled  by  imbeciles  in  New  York  or  men  of  intelli 
gence  in  Holland  made  little  difference  so  long  as 
they  were  allowed  to  drive  their  bargains  and  were 
not  disturbed  when  they  smoked  their  long  pipes 
after  their  midday  meal. 

The  Dutch  brought  over  with  them  an  aristocratic 
system  of  land  tenure  that  was  even  more  harmful 
than  the  plantation  and  manorial  systems  of  Vir 
ginia  and  Maryland.  Great  estates  were  in  the 
hands  of  the  patroons,  who  would  not  part  with  an 
acre  but  worked  them  with  tenants,  which  was  one 
of  the  reasons  population  increased  so  slowly  and 
the  colony  remained  in  such  a  backward  condition 
until  after  the  English  occupation.  Immigrants 
both  from  Europe  and  the  English  colonies  were 
not  content  to  be  the  tenants  of  Dutch  masters 
when  in  neighboring  colonies  they  could  take  up 
land  and  become  its  owners.  The  great  estates  of 
the  South  were  made  possible  by  slavery  and  the 
shipping  of  indented  white  servants,  but  although 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT  391 

the  Dutch  were  keen  slave  traders  and  a  fairly  large 
number  of  African  slaves  were  to  be  found  in  New 
York,  they  were  principally  used  as  house  servants 
and  seldom  employed  in  field  labor.  The  Dutch 
had  it  in  their  power  to  attract  to  their  vast  territory 
the  best  yeomanry  of  England  and  the  cream  of  the 
peasantry  of  Europe,  for  as  there  was  little  infusion 
of  slave  labor  the  cultivation  of  the  soil  by  free  white 
men  was  no  degradation ;  but  in  this  as  in  so  many 
other  things  we  see  Dutch  ineptitude.  They  were 
unable  to  grasp  their  opportunies  or  to  found  last 
ing  social  institutions.  An  American  biographer  of 
Peter  Stuyvesant  finds  that  "in  New  York  City,  the 
high  stoop  house,  and  the  peculiar  observances  of 
New  Year's  Day  which  continued  until  1870,  are 
two  familiar  relics  of  Holland.  The  valuable  cus 
tom  of  registering  transfers  of  real  estate  has  been 
received  from  the  same  source."  1  A  pitifully  weak 
foundation  on  which  to  attempt  to  erect  a  lasting 
monument  to  Dutch  genius ! 

Virginian  institutions  were  economically  unsound 
and  morally  vicious,  yet  the  Virginian  was  redeemed 
by  his  fondness  for  outdoor  sports,  his  love  of  adven 
ture,  his  daring,  and  the  appeal  which  nature  always 
made  to  him,  and  his  intellect  and  creative  political 
genius  profoundly  excite  our  admiration.  The 
Dutch  overlords  were  aristocrats  of  a  different  cali 
bre.  They  took  their  pleasures  more  reposefully  and 
with  that  phlegmatic  love  of  ease  which  was  as 

1  Tuckerman:  Peter  Stuyvesant,  p.  186. 


392          THE  AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

characteristic  of  their  amusements  as  it  was  of  their 
business  methods.  They  gained  little  because  they 
feared  to  venture  much.  It  was  a  natural  instinct 
in  the  Virginians  to  gamble;  temperamentally  they 
were  adventurers,  and  from  being  speculators  in 
commerce  they  became  speculative  political  philo 
sophers,  their  speculations  tempered  by  a  strain 
of  clear  thinking  and  material  prudence.  The 
Dutch  had  no  love  of  speculation ;  great  rashness, 
which  is  the  audacity  of  genius,  was  foreign  to  their 
nature  as  well  as  their  training. 

No  people  who  have  played  a  part  in  affecting  the 
destinies  of  mankind  —  and  that  the  Dutch  did,  no 
one  who  is  familiar  with  their  history  or  that  of 
Europe  in  the  sixteenth-century  will  deny  —  offer 
such  a  curious  and  puzzling  study.  They  were  en 
dowed  with  many  heroic  virtues ;  against  the  mighty 
power  of  Philip  II  of  Spain  they  successfully  offered 
their  puny  resistance;  no  sacrifice  wras  too  great  for 
them  to  make,  no  torture  too  great  for  them  to  bear ; 
and  yet  virile,  industrious,  undegenerate — and  those 
qualities  make  the  mystery  all  the  greater -- they 
have  influenced  the  world  so  little.  On  their  soil  they 
were  the  modern  Antaeus  and  invincible,  but  when 
they  wrestled  in  a  new  land  their  sinews  were  made 
weak  and  their  strength  was  gone.  Schiller  says  the 
pressure  of  circumstances  surprised  them  and  forced 
a  transitory  greatness  upon  them,  which  "  they  never 
could  have  possessed  and  perhaps  never  will  pos 
sess  again";  that  necessity  created  genius  and  acci- 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     393 

dent  made  heroes.1  The  crisis  produces  its  genius 
or  hero,  who  influences  not  only  the  thought  of  his 
own  time  but  moulds  the  future.  In  Holland  he  did 
not.  The  example  of  the  rise  of  the  Dutch  Repub 
lic  could  have  had  little  if  any  influence  in  bringing 
about  the  birth  of  the  American  Republic.  It  is  in 
teresting  to  note  that  when  the  United  Provinces 
resolved  to  renounce  their  allegiance  to  the  King  and 
to  seek  foreign  assistance,  they  had  no  thought  of 
founding  a  republic,  but  were  ready  to  submit  them 
selves  to  a  monarch  less  bigoted  and  cruel  than 
Philip; 2  and  to  compare  that  action  with  the  course 
of  the  English  colonists  when  they  resolved  on  in 
dependence.  Independence  did  not  mean  to  them 
simply  a  change  of  rulers;  they  were  not  willing  to 
free  themselves  from  the  connection  with  the  British 
Crown  merely  to  become  the  subjects  of  another 
King.  Circumstances  had  forced  them  into  revolt, 
and  they  staked  everything  on  their  own  strength. 
Note  again  how  different  were  the  results  of  the 
adoption  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence  in 
America  and  the  Act  of  Abjuration,  the  Declara 
tion  of  Dutch  Independence,  in  1581.  In  America, 
once  independence  was  resolved  upon,  the  colonists 
agreed  to  stand  or  fall  together,  and  opposition  was 
silenced.  The  Tories  were  of  course  to  be  reckoned 
with,  but  they  were  able  to  drive  no  wedge  between 
the  allied  colonies.  But  in  Holland  "Providence 

1  Schiller:  History  of  the  Revolt  of  United  Netherlands,  Introduction,  p.  9. 
*  May:  Democracy  in  Europe,  vol.  ii,  p.  48. 


394          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

did  not  permit  the  whole  country,  so  full  of  wealth, 
intelligence,  healthy  political  action  —  so  stocked 
with  powerful  cities  and  an  energetic  population,  to 
be  combined  into  one  free  prosperous  common 
wealth."1  Ambition,  venality,  religious  intolerance, 
many  causes,  kept  kindred  provinces  apart  which 
ought  to  have  been  united. 

Before  leaving  New  York,  brief  reference  must  be 
made  to  an  episode  which  happened  after  the  Eng 
lish  were  masters.  In  itself  it  means  nothing,  it  had 
no  important  consequences,  it  turned  no  stream  of 
thought,  but  it  is  of  interest  as  showing  how  the 
same  causes  were  operating  North  and  South,  how 
the  same  considerations  influenced  men  through 
out  the  spread  of  the  colonies. 

The  reader  will  recall  the  panic  that  possessed  the 
Maryland  Protestants  after  the  dethronement  of 
James  II  and  the  Davis  and  Pate  rebellion.  In 
New  York  there  was  a  similar  panic,  there  was  for 
the  moment  equal  uncertainty  and  fear  whether  the 
Protestants  or  Papists  would  rule ;  and  as  authority 
was  broken,  the  time  was  opportune  for  any  man  of 
courage  or  reckless  adventure  wTho  could  play  on 
the  fears  or  passions  of  the  people  to  seize  the  gov 
ernment.  Such  a  man  was  found  in  Jacob  Leisler, 
but  it  is  difficult  to  tell  whether  he  is  worthy  to  be 
placed  in  the  valhalla  of  history  or  was  merely  a  his 
torical  mountebank,  for  the  estimates  of  his  charac 
ter  and  motives  are  conflicting  and  there  are  neither 

1  Motley:  The  Rise  of  the  Dutch  Republic,  vol.  iii,  p.  516. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT  395 

letters  nor  diaries  to  reveal  the  inner  nature  of  the 
man.  His  patronymic  stamps  his  nationality.  A 
German  merchant,  according  to  some  of  his  bio 
graphers  a  brewer,  regarding  Papacy  with  horror, 
he,  if  his  detractors  are  to  be  believed,  "seized" 
New  York,  while  more  friendly  critics  tell  us  that 
he  was  "induced"  to  become  a  leader  in  a  great 
emergency;  just  as  Bradstreet  became  the  head  of 
the  provisional  government  in  Massachusetts  when 
a  similar  movement  drove  Andros  from  power. 
Whether  patriot  or  adventurer,  the  fact  remains 
that  Leisler  became  the  de  facto  governor  of  New 
York,  and  to  the  sound  of  trumpets  proclaimed 
William  and  Mary  King  and  Queen  of  England  and 
their  colonies  over  the  seas.  His  stormy  rule  lasted 
for  two  years,  when  he  was  tried  and  hanged  for 
high  treason.  "Calm  and  impartial  judgment,  en 
lightened  by  truth,  now  assigns  to  Jacob  Leisler  the 
high  position  in  history  of  a  patriot  and  martyr,"  * 
one  of  his  eulogists  declares ;  and  another  holds  it  to 
be  "the  office  of  history  to  bear  witness  to  Jacob 
Leisler's  integrity  as  a  man,  his  loyalty  as  a  subject, 
and  his  purity  as  a  patriot"2  The  founder  of  the 
democracy  of  New  York  was  Jacob  Leisler,  says 
still  another  historian,  who  adds  that  "Leisler  was 
truly  an  honest  man,  who  though  a  martyr  to  the 
cause  of  liberty,  and  sacrificed  by  injustice,  aris 
tocracy  and  party  malignity,  ought  to  be  consid- 

1  Lossing:  The  Empire  State,  p.  113. 

1  Frothingham:  The  Rise  of  the  Republic,  p.  95. 


396          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

ered  as  one  in  whom  New  York  should  take  pride 
-  although  the  ancestors  of  many  of  her  best  men 
denounced  him  as  a  rebel  and  a  traitor."  * 

It  was  under  Leisler's  administration  that  the 
first  Colonial  Conference  was  called  to  enable  the 
colonies  to  take  concerted  measures  to  repel  French 
aggression  and  carry  the  war  into  Canada.  The 
resultant  consequences  were  neither  militarily  nor 
politically  important  at  the  time,  but  it  was  the 
germ  that  was  later  to  bring  forth  the  Great 
Confederation  which  was  to  expand  into  the 
Republic. 

In  the  settlement  of  Pennsylvania  as  of  Mary 
land  one  name  predominates.  There  is  a  certain 
semblance  between  Baltimore  and  William  Penn; 
both  were  primarily  inspired  by  the  same  motives; 
Baltimore,  as  we  have  geen,  was  animated  to  estab 
lish  a  Catholic  colony  $nd  at  the  same  time  toler 
antly  to  countenance  the  observance  of  other  forms 
of  religious  worship;  Penn,  even  more  liberal  in  his 
religious  views  because  his  creed  was  broader  and 
less  encumbered  by  ceremonial  tradition,  found  his 
guidance  in  the  simple  doctrine  of  the  equality  of 
man.  With  him  that  doctrine  was  no  dogma,  but  a 
practical  code  that  governed  him  in  all  the  rela 
tions  of  life.  In  the  history  of  the  colonies  there  is 
no  man  whose  aim  was  so  lofty  or  whose  purposes 
were  so  high  and  who  so  steadfastly  clung  to  his 

1  Dunlap:  History  of  the  New  Netherlands,  vol.  i,  p.  211. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT    397 

ideals.  A  religious  enthusiast,  a  philanthropist  in 
the  widest  interpretation  of  the  word,  a  man  in 
whom  an  exact  sense  of  justice  was  perhaps  the 
dominating  quality,  he  was  still  no  narrow  closet 
mystic  who  conceived  it  unnecessary  to  take  thought 
of  the  morrow.  The  fervid  eloquence  and  zeal  of 
George  Fox  had  made  this  man  turn  to  Quakerism 
as  the  one  outlet  to  satisfy  his  spiritual  nature,  the 
simplicity  and  charity  of  all  that  Fox  taught  ap 
pealed  with  peculiar  force  to  his  impressionable  tem 
perament,  for  Penn's  emotions  while  deep-centred 
also  lay  close  to  the  surface,  a  seeming  contradic 
tion  but  not  uncommon  in  men  of  great  impulses. 
Baltimore,  we  have  previously  had  occasion  to  re 
mark,  was  no  diarist,  and  we  search  in  vain  for  any 
intimate  self-revelation  of  his  real  character  or  his 
innermost  feelings;  all  that  we  know  of  him  is  his 
record  as  proprietor  and  administrator. 

About  Penn  there  is  no  uncertainty.  He  has  left 
copious  letters  and  essays  and  pamphlets ;  he  argued 
openly  on  the  questions  of  the  day ;  what  he  thought 
the  world  knows.  In  turning  his  back  on  the  re 
ligion  of  his  fathers,  sincerity  and  conviction  alone 
moved  him ;  he  risked  disinheritance  for  the  sake  of 
conscience;  he  was  willing  to  suffer  calumny  and 
social  ostracism  rather  than  renounce  his  new-found 
belief.  And  yet  there  was  an  intensely  practical 
side  to  Penn's  character  which  made  him  a  great 
administrator  and  ranks  him  foremost  among  the 
colony  builders ;  and  this  spirit  of  the  practical  was 


398          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

typical  of  Puritanism,  and  Quakerism  was  merely 
another  expression  of  the  same  moral  agencies  that 
produced  the  Puritan. 

All  that  we  know  as  Puritanism,  the  Puritan  in 
England  and  America,  Calvinism,  Quakerism,  the 
forces  which  they  set  in  motion,  forces  as  old  as  cre 
ation  and  as  eternal  as  eternity,  that  produced 
such  men  as  Wycliffe,  Huss,  Zwinglius,  Calvin, 
Roger  Williams,  and  William  Penn;  all  the  sects 
and  movements  now  conveniently  known  as  Non- 
conformism;  all  the  prophets  and  their  disciples, 
sprung  from  the  same  source.  It  was  a  spiritual  as 
well  as  an  intellectual  revolt;  in  some  respects  it 
was  the  intellect  rather  than  the  spiritual  nature  of 
man  that  made  him  seek  new  inspiration ;  that  made 
him  a  rebel  against  superstition  and  tradition ;  that 
made  him  revolt  against  injustice  and  oppression 
buttressed  in  a  social  structure  resting  on  a  founda 
tion  of  moral  and  intellectual  slavery  which  denied 
him  opportunity.  It  was  a  vague  but  at  the  same 
time  practical  longing  for  a  betterment  of  condi 
tions;  and  for  so  many  centuries  had  men  been 
taught  to  believe  that  society  and  the  church  were 
interwoven,  that  to  them  it  seemed  possible  to  bring 
about  reform  only  in  one  way,  and  that  was  to  es 
cape  from  the  iron  hand  of  the  church  that  stifled 
their  aspirations.  No  other  religio-social  movement 
that  has  endured,  that  has  been  something  more 
than  a  mere  emotional  outburst  with  its  appeal  to 
the  higher  nature  of  man,  has  so  influenced  char- 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     399 

acter  and  modified  society  as  the  great  Puritan 
movement  in  combining  with  a  singular  devotion 
to  a  concept  of  duty  and  the  regulation  of  life,  an 
intensely  practical  and  commercial  spirit;  and  as  I 
have  previously  explained,  the  term  "Puritan"  is 
used  here  in  its  wider  sense  and  embraces  forces 
that  were  in  existence  long  before  the  word  Puritan 
designated  exclusively  a  particular  form  and  ob 
servance  of  religious  belief.  It  was  perhaps  the 
strictness  of  life  which  it  enjoined,  the  sense  of  order 
and  thrift  which  it  inculcated,  the  preciseness  with 
which  existence  must  be  regulated,  the  hatred  of  all 
extravagance  and  waste,  whether  of  emotion  or 
physical  vigor;  the  respect  which  men  were  taught 
to  have  for  their  bodies  and  the  inanimate  things 
with  which  they  were  surrounded,  that  made  the 
Puritan  so  intensely  practical,  and  founded  the  New 
England  thrift  often  treated  with  contempt,  but  a 
very  vital  force  in  the  making  of  character,  which  is 
seen  in  the  difference  between  the  Puritan  civiliza 
tion  and  the  development  of  the  Puritan  colonists 
and  the  men  who  settled  the  South. 

The  practical  side  of  Penn's  character  is  shown  in 
the  settlement  of  his  proprietary  grant,  his  Frame  of 
Government,  the  treaty  he  made  with  the  Indians 
—  here  the  principles  that  ever  controlled  him  ex 
ercised  a  greater  influence  than  selfish  considera 
tion  —  and  his  laying  out  of  the  city  of  Philadel 
phia.  Alone  among  the  leaders  of  the  English  col 
onization  in  the  seventeenth  century,  he  can  claim 


400          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

to  be  a  city  founder.  That  dignity,  the  result  of 
symmetry  and  spaciousness,  in  which  Philadelphia 
ranks  above  any  city  of  its  own  age  and  kind,  is 
largely  due  to  Penn's  wise  choice  of  a  site  and  to  his 
systematic  construction.1  Like  Calvert  his  aim  was 
to  found  a  place  of  refuge  for  the  people  of  his 
faith,  but  it  was  only  for  a  short  time  that  Maryland 
was  a  Catholic  colony  and  it  was  never  exclusively 
Catholic,  while  in  Pennsylvania  the  teachings  of 
George  Fox  and  the  influence  of  Quakerism  were 
the  dominating  forces;  and  the  political  and  social 
life  of  the  colony,  and  later  the  state,  was  influenced 
by  the  tenets  of  the  Quaker  faith.  With  Baltimore, 
as  we  have  seen,  toleration  must  have  been  more  or 
less  a  matter  of  expediency,  although  in  saying  that 
we  detract  nothing  from  his  liberality  and  broad 
statesmanship.  With  Penn  religious  equality  and 
personal  liberty  were  a  moral  conviction  without  re 
gard  to  political  or  other  considerations,  and  he 
brought  to  his  side  men  who  thought  and  believed 
as  he  did,  who  were  as  zealous  in  maintaining  what 
to  them  was  the  right  as  the  Puritans  were  equally 
zealous  in  suppressing  every  effort  to  weaken  the 
power  of  the  theocracy. 

The  Puritanism  that  was  planted  on  the  shores  of 
New  England  was  bound  to  break  down  or  to  be 
profoundly  modified,  because  it  was  narrow  and 
dwarfing  and  was  in  essence  a  form  of  slavery 
repugnant  to  men  born  with  the  freedom  of  intellect ; 

1  Cambridge  Modern  History,  vol.  vii,  p.  50. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     401 

it  was  the  attempt  so  often  made,  but  which  has 
always  been  resisted,  to  substitute  for  the  moral 
ity  of  the  intellect  blind  obedience  to  a  warped 
creed.  The  religious  and  moral  code  of  Penn 
was  broader,  and  the  more  narrowly  it  was  fol 
lowed  the  more  the  spiritual  nature  of  its  believers 
expanded.  To  men  seeking  to  overthrow  the  tram 
mels  of  superstition  and  escape  from  a  system 
that  cast  their  lives  in  a  contracted  mold,  the 
philosophy  of  the  Quaker  was  more  attractive  than 
that  of  the  Puritan;  there  was  a  certain  flexibility 
in  Quakerism  that  could  adjust  itself  to  changing 
conditions,  while  Puritanism  was  too  rigid ;  it  would 
break  under  the  strain,  but  it  could  not  bend  to  the 
play  of  forces.  Puritanism  was  as  unyielding  as  a 
rod  of  iron;  Quakerism  was  a  fine-strung  wire 
vibrating  to  the  music  of  the  soul.  The  Puritans, 
all  sects,  in  fact,  clung  to  their  dogmas,  their  doc 
trines,  their  sacraments,  without  which  it  was  im 
possible  to  conceive  at  that  time  religion  could 
exist.  The  Quakers  had  no  ceremonies,  no  liturgy; 
they  wrere  satisfied  simply  to  accept  the  inspiration 
of  the  Scriptures  and  the  divinity  of  Christ;  to  cut 
away  all  formalism,  to  bring  men  to  face  God 
rather  than  to  look  on  their  priests,  to  reject  out 
ward  observances  which  mean  nothing  and  obscure 
those  things  that  Christ  taught  and  all  men  can  be 
lieve  irrespective  of  creed  or  the  manner  in  which  it 
is  recited.  "The  baptism  which  saves  the  soul  is 
not  dipping  in  or  sprinkling  with  water,  but  the 


402          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

answer  of  a  good  conscience  toward  God,  by  the 
resurrection  of  Jesus  Christ." 

Pennsylvania  and  New  York  were  the  two  col 
onies  in  which  there  were  from  the  beginning  a 
conglomerate  population  and  a  strong  alien  ele 
ment,  which  made  both  less  strictly  English  than 
their  neighbors  to  the  north  or  those  more  remote 
of  the  south.  From  the  time  when  the  Mayflower 
brought  over  her  first  company  until  we  near  the 
end  of  the  first  quarter  of  the  eighteenth-century, 
about  1720,  a  year  that  marks  the  beginning  of  that 
great  Irish  emigration,  there  was  no  alien  immigra 
tion  into  New  England  and  the  population  was  fed 
by  the  arrival  of  Englishmen  and  natural  increase, 
the  birth  rate  being  higher  then  than  it  is  now 
among  either  the  English  or  Americans  of  native 
stock.  The  people  of  New  England,  prior  to  the 
tide  of  European  immigration,  were  a  homogeneous 
race,  alike  in  religion  and  customs,  a  fecund  people, 
who  became  colonizers  and  "emigrants"  in  turn, 
who  were  filled  with  the  resistless  Wanderlust  that 
took  them  to  New  York  and  to  the  South  and  the 
West,  impelled  to  seek  new  homes  because  popu 
lation  was  constantly  pressing  on  the  land  and 
exerted  a  centrifugal  force  that  drove  men  from 
the  centre  to  extend  their  boundaries.  In  the  south 
ern  colonies  the  admixture  of  foreign  blood  began 
earlier,  but  unlike  New  York  it  tinctured  rather 
than  colored  the  English  element.  Huguenots  and 
the  Scotch-Irish,  as  we  have  seen,  found  foot- 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     403 

ing  in  the  South,  and  about  the  middle  of  the 
eighteenth-century  there  was  a  considerable  influx 
of  "German  Palatines"  into  Maryland,  but  this 
infusion  was  not  great  enough  to  destroy  the  homo 
geneity  of  the  southern  Englishmen.  In  New  York 
there  were  Dutch,  English,  French,  Swedes,  Ger 
mans,  Jews,  Walloons,  "and  a  rabble  from  all  parts 
of  the  world."  New  Amsterdam,  we  are  told,  had 
"so  many  odds  and  ends  of  humanity  that,  twenty 
years  after  Hudson  had  discovered  Manhattan, 
fourteen  languages  were  spoken  in  its  streets";1 
and  when  the  eighteenth-century  was  rapidly  draw 
ing  to  a  close,  it  was  the  boast  of  New  York  that 
men  speaking  the  tongue  of  every  civilized  people 
were  to  be  found  in  the  city.2 

In  Pennsylvania  there  were  Swedes,  Germans, 
Welsh,  Scotch-Irish,  and  English.  The  German 
element  was  particularly  strong,  Penn's  liberality 
offering  them  that  promise  of  religious  freedom 
which  was  denied  them  in  their  own  country. 
Mennonites,  Tunkers  and  other  sects,  the  German 
branch  of  that  great  movement  which  produced 
Puritanism  and  Quakerism  in  England,  to  escape 
persecution,  came  in  large  numbers,  and  they  were 
followed  by  Lutherans  and  members  of  the  German 
Reformed  Church.  Soon  the  allurement  of  the  new 
world  appealed  to  the  Germans,  and  they  came  in 
the  eighteenth-century  as  they  continued  to  come 

1  Avery:  A  History  of  the  United  States  and  its  People,  vol  ii,  p.  91. 

2  McMaster:  A  History  of  the  People  of  the  United  States,  vol.  i,  p.  55. 


404          THE  AMERICAN  PEOPLE 

in  the  nineteenth,  and  are  still  arriving  in  the  twenti 
eth.  Just  as  at  first  they  fled  to  escape  religious 
persecution,  and  at  a  time  nearer  to  us  they  left  to 
avoid  military  service  and  others  came  solely  be 
cause  the  New  World  offered  a  betterment  of  condi 
tions,  so  in  the  early  days  of  Pennsylvania  the 
German  immigration  soon  ceased  to  be  due  to  reli 
gious  oppression  and  was  influenced  by  the  same 
considerations  that  have  always  controlled  great 
migratory  movements,  the  hope  of  better  things. 
All  during  the  colonial  period  and  until  the  revolu 
tion  the  Germans  continued  to  come  in  large 
numbers  to  Pennsylvania  and  became  such  a  con 
siderable  element  in  the  population  that  the  "  Penn 
sylvania  Dutch,"  as  they  were  commonly  called,1 
were  in  language  and  manners  and  customs  apart 
from  the  English  and  were  little  influenced  and 
slowly  assimilated  by  them.  Then  as  now  these 
Germans  settlers  were  distinguished  by  their  indus 
try,  sobriety,  love  of  order  and  thrift;  and  next  to 
the  Puritans  the  Germans  have  contributed  more 
to  the  making  of  the  American  character  than  any 
other  race  or  strain.  Usually  the  German  landed 
penniless  or  so  near  poverty  that  he  had  to  rely 
solely  upon  his  own  efforts  for  a  living,  but  he 
went  quickly  to  work  at  whatever  offered,  he  was 

1  Until  quite  recently,  Americans  commonly  spoke  of  Germans  as  "Dutch 
men,"  and  even  now  the  term  "Dutch"  is  used  colloquially  or  in  contempt 
to  describe  a  German;  and  the  expression  "a  thick-headed  Dutchman, "ap 
plied  to  an  obtuse  German,  or  a  German  immigrant  who  has  recently  landed 
and  is  unfamiliar  with  the  language  or  American  ways,  is  frequently  heard. 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT  405 

sparing  and  frugal  and  looked  forward  to  realizing 
his  ambition,  which  was  to  take  up  a  few  acres  and 
farm.  This  was  forest  land,  and  before  he  could 
put  plough  to  it  he  must  build  himself  a  rude  cabin 
and  with  axe  and  torch  clear  away  the  trees  and  the 
underbrush;  but  his  optimism,  his  industry,  and 
the  help  of  his  neighbors  soon  put  him  on  his  feet, 
and  when  his  circumstances  improved  he  was  able 
to  buy  a  redemptioner,  add  more  land  to  his  hold 
ings  and  surround  himself  with  greater  comforts. 
A  trait  characteristic  of  the  Germans,  which  from 
the  beginning  has  always  endured,  is  that  they 
have  ever  been  loyal  to  their  adopted  country. 
There  was  a  strong  Tory  element  in  Pennsylvania 
which  exerted  a  powerful  influence  against  the 
adoption  of  the  Declaration  of  Independence,  and 
without  Pennsylvania  union  was  impossible;  but 
it  was  the  Germans  who  beat  down  Tory  opposi 
tion  and  brought  the  support  of  Pennsylvania  to 
the  other  colonies.  They  were  equally  loyal  to 
the  new-born  Republic,  and  the  way  in  which 
they  responded  to  Lincoln's  call  to  arms  and 
freely  offered  their  lives  to  preserve  and  maintain 
the  Union  the  muster  rolls  of  the  Northern  armies 
eloquently  testify;  and  the  prominent  part  taken 
by  American  generals  of  German  birth  is  a  part 
of  the  history  of  that  great  conflict. 

The  three  remaining  colonies,  New  Jersey,  New 
Hampshire  and  Delaware,  can  be  dismissed  with  a 


406          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

few  sentences.  New  Jersey  was  within  the  Dutch 
grant  of  the  New  Netherlands,  but  its  existence  was 
of  indifferent  concern  to  them  and  the  few  wlio 
crossed  the  river  and  settled  there  found  Swedes 
from  the  Delaware,  who  always  trespassed  on 
Dutch  soil ;  and  there  was  of  course  a  scattering  of 
Puritans,  for  wherever  there  was  vacant  land  or  the 
promise  of  founding  a  successful  settlement  there 
the  Puritan  went. 

The  genesis  of  New  Hampshire  is  a  counterpart 
of  Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island;  they  wrere  all 
three  the  offshoots  of  Massachusetts  and  born  in  the 
throes  of  religious  persecution.  When  Mrs.  Hutch- 
inson  and  her  followers  were  banished  from  Mas 
sachusetts  some  went  to  Providence  and  founded 
what  later  became  the  state  of  Rhode  Island ;  others 
settled  Exeter,  and  in  the  usual  fashion  of  that  time 
soon  a  new  colony  arose.  Just  as  Connecticut  was 
founded  by  the  establishment  of  little  towns  which 
were  afterwards  politically  incorporated,  so  the  be 
ginning  of  New  Hampshire  came  from  the  four 
towns  of  Portsmouth,  Dover,  Exeter  and  Hampden, 
w^hich  were  founded  either  by  Puritans  from  Eng 
land  or  their  coreligionists  from  Massachusetts. 
There  as  elsewhere  in  New  England  the  church  re 
public  was  established,  the  straggling  settlement 
clustering  about  the  rude  meeting-house,  which 
was  always  the  heart  of  the  independent  state  of 
the  Puritans  in  the  New  World.  The  New  Hamp 
shire  settlements  were  too  weak  to  stand  alone  and 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     407 

not  strong  enough  to  sink  mutual  jealousies  and  find 
strength  in  confederation.  For  twenty  years  they 
quarrelled,  then  they  applied  to  Massachusetts  to 
be  taken  under  her  jurisdiction,  and  forty  years 
later,  during  which  time  the  towns  had  made  no 
progress,  the  English  courts  decided  that  Massa 
chusetts  had  no  legal  title  and  New  Hampshire  be 
came  a  royal  province  and  was  governed  from  Lon 
don.  There  is  really  no  history  of  New  Hampshire 
apart  from  Massachusetts  in  this  period,  and  the  in 
fluence  of  Massachusetts  was  so  strong  that  the 
younger  colony  developed  no  originality  and 
brought  no  contribution  to  the  thought  of  the  time. 
Delaware  was  originally  settled  by  the  Dutch, 
who  claimed  it  by  right  of  discovery  and  as  em 
braced  in  the  grant  of  the  New  Netherlands  although 
the  English  also  asserted  title  to  it  as  part  of  Vir 
ginia,  which  had  neither  metes  nor  bounds  but  ex 
tended  indefinitely  from  ocean  to  ocean.  The 
Dutch  established  a  small  settlement  in  1631,  but 
their  rule  was  short,  as  the  settlers  were  massacred 
to  a  man  by  the  Indians  in  revenge  for  the  killing  of 
one  of  their  chiefs.  In  1638  Peter  Minuit,  who  had 
formerly  been  the  agent  of  the  Dutch  West  India 
Company  and  governor  of  the  New  Netherlands, 
but  who  resented  his  removal  from  office,  under  the 
patronage  of  the  Queen  of  Sweden  and  prominent 
merchants,  led  a  Swedish  colony  to  Delaware  Bay, 
where  a  fort  was  erected  and  a  settlement  created  at 
what  is  now  the  site  of  Wilmington.  This  is  the 


408          THE   AMERICAN   PEOPLE 

first  and  only  colony  founded  by  Sweden  in  the  New 
World,  but  Sweden  wrote  her  brief  chapter  in  Amer 
ican  colonization  in  water.  She  brought  nothing  to 
the  common  stock ;  she  left  not  the  slightest  mark  of 
her  nationality  or  character.  Little  impression  as 
the  Dutch  made  as  colony  builders,  still  less  was 
that  made  by  the  Swedes,  who  bequeathed  not  even 
a  trace  of  language,  custom  or  law.  At  a  later 
stage  in  the  development  of  the  American  people 
we  shall  have  to  deal  with  a  great  Scandinavian  in 
flux,  but  that  has  no  bearing  on  the  colonial  period. 
The  Swedes  attach  no  such  sentiment  to  the  spot 
that  was  their  landing-place  in  the  New  World  as 
the  English  do  to  Plymouth  Rock,  but  with  the 
Swedes  it  was  merely  a  passing  incident  in  their  life 
that  had  no  more  lasting  consequences  than  the 
scars  of  childhood  have  on  a  man's  nature ;  with  the 
English  it  was  veritably  the  rock  on  which  was  built 
a  civilization  no  less  than  a  polity  which  was  to 
affect  all  mankind. 

The  petty  quarrels  between  Dutch  and  Swedish 
governors,  the  transfer  of  sovereignty  to  Dutch  and 
English  as  the  results  of  the  fortunes  of  war,  the 
disputes  between  proprietors  as  to  boundaries,  the 
inclusion  at  one  time  of  Delaware  in  Pennsylvania 
and  its  subsequent  independence,  are  of  no  concern 
for  the  purpose  we  have  in  view.  As  a  colony  Dela 
ware  is  as  nonexistent  as  New  Hampshire  or  New 
Jersey;  they  were  members  of  a  family  that  influ 
enced  it  neither  for  good  nor  evil,  they  brought 


HOW  THE  DUTCH  CAME  AND  WENT     409 

to  it  no  added  lustre,  nor  did  they  bow  its  head  in 
shame.  In  a  family  distinguished  for  the  extraor 
dinary  brilliancy  and  attainments  of  its  sons  they, 
by  their  commonplace  and  placid  temperament, 
simply  served  as  a  background  to  make  more  con 
spicuous  those  talents  which  they  were  denied. 


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INDEX 


Aberginians,  the,  176. 

Act  concerning  religion,  281. 

Action,  human,  inexorable  result  of 
causes,  66. 

Adams,  Brooks,  on  persecution  of 
witches  in  Massachusetts,  181. 

Alaska,  appropriation  for  care  of  insane 
in,  60;  effect  of  climate  on  mentality 
in,  61;  increase  of  insanity  in,  60;  Sig 
nal  Corps  duty  curtailed  in,  60. 

Albany,  under  the  Dutch,  389,  390. 

Allen,  Ethan,  at  Fort  Ticonderoga, 
voiced  the  Puritan  spirit,  276. 

Alliances,  entangling,  272. 

Alva,  Duke  of,  cruelties  of,  120. 

America,  aesthetic  civilization  of  Eng 
land  not  transplanted  to,  90 ;  constant 
change  in,  35;  contrast  with  England, 
at  the  beginning  of  the  seventeenth 
century,  72 ;  crucible  to  fuse  elements 
of  race  and  amalgamate  them  into 
nationality,  314;  crumbling  of  theo 
cracy  foreshadowed  religious  and  men 
tal  liberality,  370 ;  early  settlement  of, 
accomplished  by  English  without  as 
sistance  from  alien  races,  311 ;  fertility 
of  the  soil,  72;  haven  for  distressed, 
326;  individualism  in,  295;  jealous  of 
authority  of  royal  governors,  295;  jus 
tice  in,  349;  land  of  natural  bounty, 
204 ;  literary  exploitation  of,  4 ;  loyalty 
of  Germans  in,  405;  no  classes  in,  76; 
no  native  civilization  in,  52;  oppor 
tunity  for  the  individual,  316;  political 
isolation  of,  296;  political  methods  in, 
result  of  political  isolation,  296;  politi 
cal  union  in,  beginning  of,  210 ;  politi 
cally  differentiated  from  mother  coun 
try,  296;  settlement  of,  beginning  of 
modern  colonization,  86;  spirit  of 
broad  humanity  in,  349;  temperature 
in,  58;  thermometric  variation,  63; 
unanimity  in  struggle  for  independ 


ence,  393;  variety  of  products  due  to 
climatic  variation  in,  71. 

American  character,  see  Character, 
American. 

American  civilization,  see  Civilization, 
American. 

American  colonies,  see  Colonies,  Ameri 
can. 

American  colonists,  see  Colonists, 
American. 

American  development,  a  phenomenon 
of  migratory  movements,  315. 

American  generals  of  German  birth, 
405. 

American  history,  advancing  frontier 
important  factor  in,  308;  four  great 
epochs  of,  42 ;  study  of  molten  civiliza 
tion,  315. 

American  home,  no  sentiment  of  ances 
tral  roof tree,  316. 

American  houses,  over-heating  of,  62. 

American  humor,  obvious  and  broad 
without  coarseness,  74. 

American  individualism  traceable  to 
Calvinism,  123. 

American  influences  in  formation,  20. 

American  institutions,  origin  of  in  Eng 
land,  134;  efforts  to  find  other  sources, 
133;  traceable  to  the  Dutch,  391. 

Americanism  made  manifest  by  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  136. 

American  liberality,  forerunner  of,  in 
Rhode  Island  colony,  375. 

American  mind,  the,  69. 

American  nation,  the,  elements  contri 
buted  by  colonies,  377;  seed  sown  in 
early  armed  advocacy  of  rights  of  the 
people,  367. 

American  people,  the,  a  natural  growth, 
81;  a  new  race,  77,  213;  aptitude  for 
business  influence  of  heredity,  91 ;  art 
subservient  to  material,  90;  begin 
nings  of,  19;  debt  to  Connecticut,  342; 


424 


INDEX 


debt  to  English,  26;  dependent  upon 
individual  effort,  65;  devotion  to  ma 
terial  conditions,  64;  differentiated  by 
climate,  45;  early  record  of,  19  ;  effect 
of  clothing,  food,  and  structure  of 
houses  on  physical  characteristics,  61 ; 
English  stock  modified  by  blood  of 
Europe,  77;  exploitation  of  virgin  ter 
ritory  by,  64;  foreign  element  aid  to 
new  race,  77;  founders  neither  soldiers 
nor  priests,  88;  four  great  epochs  in 
history  of,  42;  hardening  effect  of 
pioneer  struggle  upon,  65 ;  influence  of 
economic  system  in  South  upon,  378; 
men  of  large  ideas,  66;  mentally  and 
physically  a  new  race,  20;  national 
standards  of,  27;  national  vitality  of, 
37;  no  wars  of  aggression  or  conquest 
in  early  history  of,  43,  53 ;  North  and 
South  contrasted,  54;  not  hybrid,  but 
new  race,  185 ;  not  poetically  inspired 
in  early  days,  80 ;  origin  traced  through 
Virginia  and  Massachusetts,  233 ;  petty 
strife  of,  320 ;  physical  vigor  of,  82 ;  po 
litical  isolation  of,  45;  process  of  se 
lection  in  early  days,  82;  progenitors 
of,  88 ;  race  characteristics  influenced 
by  variation  in  temperature,  54;  race 
of  extraordinary  intelligence,  64;  re 
sult  of  survival  of  fittest  among,  65; 
spirit  of  1776  born  a  century  and  a  half 
before  that  day,  136 ;  struggle  against 
nature  of,  47;  unusual  opportunity  to 
study  as  a  race,  52;  variation  from 
Puritan  type,  185. 

American  Protective  Association  (A.  P. 
A.),  286. 

American  psychology,  difference  be 
tween  Puritan  and  Pilgrim  of  funda 
mental  importance,  102;  effect  of 
Rhode  Island  colony  upon,  376;  false 
premise  of,  32;  influence  of  climate, 
size  of  country,  rainfall  and  food  upon, 
71;  influence  of  sun  and  snow,  276. 

American  race,  created  by  an  obstinate 
king,  138;  influence  of  nature  in  de 
velopment  of,  64 ;  influence  of  war  on 
development  of,  43. 

American  Revolution,  folly  of  rulers  and 
quarrels  of  Church  prepared  colonists' 
minds  for  final  armed  resistance,  304. 


American  society  founded  on  Republi 
can  form  of  government,  386. 

American  social  and  political  institu 
tions,  313. 

American  spirit  of  expansion  and  ex 
tension,  306. 

American  thought,  effect  of  Rhode  Is 
land  upon,  374. 

Americans,  the,  a  grave  people,  77;  a 
natural  growth,  81;  belief  in  univer 
sal  equality  of  man,  79;  blend  of  Pu 
ritan  and  Cavalier,  247;  called  from 
plow  to  battlefield,  81;  constant  ef 
fort  to  improve  conditions,  268 ;  conti 
nental  not  insular,  67;  divine  discon 
tent  of,  268;  foreign  infusion  in,  20; 
idealistic  spirit  among,  326 ;  individu 
alism  marked  characteristic  of,  296 ;  in 
fluenced  by  foreign  blood,  77 ;  lack  of 
reticence,  26;  love  of  fun,  74;  mental 
influence  of  new  conditions  on  parent 
stock,  296;  nomadic  spirit  in  blood, 
316;  not  a  poetical  people,  80;  not  con 
sciously  national  hypocrites,  79;  not 
warlike  but  of  highly  developed  mili 
tary  spirit,  351 ;  obtrusiveness  of,  78 ; 
optimism  of,  37,  316;  peculiarly  self- 
reliant  temper  foredoomed  English 
rule  in  colonies,  321;  phenomenal 
youth  of,  35;  political  and  oratorical 
training  of,  266;  political  philosophy 
of,  261;  political  system,  271;  prone  to 
melancholy,  74;  readiness  for  field 
service  result  of  Indian  warfare,  351; 
reflect  Puritan  protest  against 
usurped  authority,  136;  right  to  vote 
and  chance  to  be  voted  for,  79 ;  saved 
from  contentment  and  physical  soft 
ness  by  fear  of  Indians,  351 ;  specula 
tive  audacity  of,  370;  treatment  of 
Indian  reflection  of  Indian  treatment 
of  victims,  352. 

Analysis  of  facts  above  religious  specula 
tion  marks  advance  of  nation,  371. 

Anarchist  and  fanatic,  modern,  resem 
blance  of  Samuel  Gorton  to,  367. 

Annapolis,  293. 

Antinomian  controversy,  beginning  of, 
362 ;  reveals  Puritan  character,  364. 

Antinomians,  Gortonites  and  Quakers 
mixed  in  Massachusetts  colony,  371. 


INDEX 


425 


Aquidneck,  haven  for  all  victims  of 
persecution,  369. 

Argument  among  the  Greeks  and  Ro 
mans,  emotion,  149;  among  the  Puri 
tans,  matter  of  conscience  and  educa 
tion,  151. 

Aristocracy,  English,  an  elastic  institu 
tion,  245. 

Aristocratic  oligarchy,  in  Virginia,  261. 

Ark  and  Dove,  278. 

Armada,  Spanish,  defeat  of,  119;  endur 
ing  consequences  of  English  victory, 
120. 

Army,  standing,  351. 

Art,  absence  of  in  America,  37 ;  analysis 
of,  37. 

Art  and  literature,  ancient,  40;  Eliza 
bethan  age  in,  41 ;  result  of  extremes 
of  wealth  and  poverty,  38. 

Assembly  and  town  meeting  formed 
public  opinion  in  colonies,  292. 

Atavism,  82. 

Bacon  and  Newton,  295. 

Bacon,  Nathaniel,  267,  293,  383. 

Bacons  andLockes,  human  veins  of  gold 
in  a  dull  mass  of  quartz,  157. 

Bagehot  quoted,  35. 

Baltimore  Lord  (Cecilius),  277,  278,  285, 
286,  287,  290,  298,  397. 

Baltimore,  fifth  lord,  303. 

Barriers  to  American  colonization,  350. 

Bavaria,  religious  persecutions  in,  332. 

Bellingham,  Richard,  punishment  of 
Quaker  women,  177. 

Berkeley,  Sir  William,  Bacon's  indict 
ment  of,  267;  his  contempt  for  the 
printing  press,  252 ;  treatment  of  Puri 
tans,  251. 

Bible,  Constitution  of  Puritan,  146, 167, 
364,  365;  dictated  Sunday  observance, 
153;  essential  to  education  of  Puritan 
youth,  162;  influence  of  teachings  on 
Puritanism,  122;  left  its  impress  upon 
the  English,  122;  popularity  with, 
and  appeal  to  the  masses,  121. 

Biblical  constitution  of  Puritan,  key 
note  to  his  influence  on  national  char 
acter,  147. 

Bigotry,  religious,  of  Europe,  174;  in 
American  colonies,  349. 


Birth  rate,  81. 

Black  labor,  334. 

Blague,  75. 

Blair,  Dr.,  incident  of  attempt  to  estab 
lish  college  in  Virginia,  265. 

Blue  Laws,  154,  185,  346. 

Boston  described  by  English  traveller, 
221. 

Boston  Common,  166. 

Boston  Harbor  fortified,  136. 

Boswell,  incident  of  Oglethorpe  and  the 
Prince  of  Wiirtemburg,  327. 

Bradford,  account  of  famine  in  Ply 
mouth,  203;  description  of  Maypole 
practices,  203. 

Brewster,  Elder,  clothes  of,  198. 

British  men-of-war  in  Charleston  Har 
bor,  319. 

Browne,  Robert,  founder  of  Separatist 
movement,  105. 

Bryce,  quoted,  36. 

Buckle,  effect  of  climate,  etc.,  on  the 
human  race,  51 ;  on  progress  of  society 
and  religious  disputes,  370. 

Bundling,  in  Massachusetts  and  Con 
necticut,  346,  347,  348,  349. 

Burgesses,  House  of,  Maryland,  287,  298, 
303. 

Burgesses,  House  of,  Virginia,  239,  262. 

Business  methods  of  Dutch  colonists  and 
of  Virginians,  392. 

Calvert,  George  (Lord  Baltimore),  seek 
ing  harbor  for  company  of  colonists, 
276. 

Calvin,  158, 174. 

Calvinism,  123,  130,  131,  398. 

Cambridge  synod,  382. 

Campbell,  on  Elizabeth's  obduracy,  126; 
on  the  Englishman's  respect  for  fact, 
128;  on  the  Puritan  sermon,  155. 

Cardross,  Lord,  317. 

Carlyle,  on  the  Puritan  ideal,  110;  on 
"  our  thinking,"  79. 

Carolina,  all  frontier,  312;  backwoods  of 
Virginia,  308;  beginning  of,  306;  ex 
ample  of  commercial  spirit  of  English 
colonies,  310;  frontier  of  English  colo 
nies  in  America,  308;  physical  and 
moral  results  of  rice  growing,  322; 
split  into  North  and  South,  307. 


426 


INDEX 


Caste,  78. 

Catarrh,  American  climate  conducive 
to,  63. 

Catholic  Church,  in  America,  character 
ized  by  tolerance,  285 ;  instrument  in 
development  of  American  character, 
285;  mass  celebrated  for  first  time, 
279 ;  non-political  in  America,  285. 

Catholic  immigration  to  America,  285. 

Catholicism,  American,  has  not  weak 
ened  the  fibre  of  American  Republi 
canism,  285;  modified  by  continued 
immigration  from  Catholic  countries 
of  Europe,  286. 

Catholics,  action  of  Maryland  legisla 
ture  to  prohibit  proselyting  of,  303; 
gave  character  to  Maryland,  304 ;  in 
Maryland  constrained  to  take  oath  of 
allegiance,  304;  discriminated  against 
in  New  Hampshire,  283 ;  persecution 
of,  in  Maryland,  287,  301 ;  picked  men 
of  Maryland,  304;  regarded  as  enemies 
of  England,  299 ;  regarded  with  suspi 
cion  throughout  the  colonial  period, 
283;  taxed  without  representation, 
304. 

Cavaliers,  the,  effect  of  political  perse 
cution,  246;  illustrious  names  among, 
233;  ruling  class  in  Virginia,  241;  mi 
gration  to  Virginia,  243 ;  and  Round 
head,  no  distinction  in  respect  to  line 
age,  244. 

Channing  on  the  long  smouldering  of 
the  American  Revolution,  321n. 

Character,  subject  to  vagary  without 
hardening  of  discipline,  372. 

Character,  American,  a  reflection  of  cli 
mate  and  political  institutions,  78; 
articles  of  faith  of,  79 ;  contradictions 
of,  77;  contribution  of  Virginia  to,  215; 
debt  to  Puritan  not  Pilgrim,  101 ;  desire 
for  expansion  acquired  through  Vir 
ginia  settlement,  235;  difference  of 
men  in  "  new  "  West  and  "  old  "  East, 
233 ;  effect  of  natural  phenomena  on, 
46;  effect  of  political  system  upon, 
297;  foundation  of,  in  unimaginative, 
narrow,  over-refined,  intellectual  type, 
95;  friction  with  governors  and  Church 
disputes,  319;  fusion  of  temperaments 
of  English,  Dutch,  Huguenot,  French, 


Scotch,  and  Irish,  314;  German  contri 
bution  to,  404;  hardened  and  made 
firm  in  Indian  warfare,  351 ;  individual 
softness  of,  inadequate  in  forming 
new  national  mold,  104;  individual 
ism  traceable  to  Calvinism,  123 ;  influ 
ence  of  religious  tolerance  of  Mary 
land  settlers  on,  276;  influence  of 
sects  and  creeds  in  Maryland,  287;  in 
fluenced  by  call  of  the  land  beyond, 
308;  land  hunger  of  Englishmen  not 
appeased  by  transplanting,  306 ;  mili 
tary  initiative  in,  351;  no  impress 
of  Dutch  settlers  upon,  379;  reflects 
Puritan  protest  against  usurped  au 
thority,  136;  result  of  environment, 
56;  review  of  fundamental  facts  of, 
212;  rude  strength  of,  320;  Saxon 
strain  in,  77;  source  of  liberty  of  con 
science  and  religious  freedom,  376; 
spirit  of  expansion  and  extension,  306 ; 
strength  and  moral  purpose  of,  trace 
able  to  Puritan,  276;  traced  to  Puritan 
in  Massachusetts,  Cavalier  in  Virginia, 
Catholic  in  Maryland,  304 ;  unaffected 
by  Swedish  settlers,  408;  wrought  by 
exercise  of  individual  expression,  335. 

Characteristics,  American,  candor,  26; 
constant  activity  and  restlessness,  68; 
constant  use  of  .superlative,  75 ;  contra 
diction  in,  78;  European  interpreta 
tion  of  "Yankee,"  343;  molded  by 
environment,  45,  52;  national  de 
spair,  77;  nervousness,  excitability, 
63;  optimism,  37;  physical,  influenced 
by  clothing  and  food,  61;  reticence, 
lack  of,  26;  self-reliant  to  obstinacy 
and  full  of  hope,  74 ;  sense  of  humor, 
tendency  to  exaggeration,  75;  traced 
to  natural  causes,  64. 

Charleston,  324. 

Charters,  English,  of  the  colonies,  385. 

Chroniclers,  early,  ingenuousness  of,  85. 

Church,  aristocracy  and  caste  in  fellow 
ship  of,  127;  hierarchy  secret  of  per. 
petuation  of,  128 ;  persecution  of,  105. 

Church  and  society,  believed  insepara 
ble,  398. 

Church  and  state,  relation  of  among 
Puritans,  364. 

Church  of  England,  feeble  hold  in  Amer- 


INDEX 


427 


ica  in  colonial  times,  287;  persecution 
of  itinerant  preachers,  105. 

Church  republic,  character  of  New  Eng 
land  settlement,  406. 

Church  rule,  resistance  to,  gave  first 
branch  colony,  338. 

City,  316. 

Civil  code,  reduced  to  writing  and 
adopted  on  American  soil,  341. 

Civilization,  great  movements  of,  en 
counter  contempt  of  older  institutions, 
375;  three  stages  of,  376;  wheel  of,  pe 
riodic  revolution  of,  23. 

Civilization,  American,  antagonistic  ele 
ments  infused  by  common  resistance 
to  oppression,  96;  battled  with  sav 
agery,  351 ;  constant  change  in,  35 ;  debt 
to  Virginia  aristocracy,  247 ;  difference 
between  East  and  West,  68;  distinct 
from  English,  41 ;  foreign  critics  of,  25 ; 
formative  condition  of,  34;  higher  op 
posed  to  a  lower  in  contest  of  colonists 
and  Indians,  353;  Indian  one  of  the 
causes  to  influence,  350 ;  new,  408 ;  new 
and  obvious,  26 ;  new  political  philoso 
phy  in,  34;  phenomenal  youth  of,  35; 
Puritan  psychologically  of  first  impor 
tance,  Virginia  first  chronologically  ,91 ; 
speculation  as  to  results  if  Virginia 
influence  had  predominated,  92;  with 
out  cross  currents  of  tradition,  296. 

Civilization,  English,  influence  of  Bible 
on,  122. 

Civilized  nation,  turning  point  in  history 
of,  371. 

Class  distinction,  200,  242. 

Class  rule  in  Maryland,  292. 

Class  system  in  Virginia  resulted  in  aris 
tocratic  oligarchy,  261. 

Clergymen,  work  of,  330. 

Climate,  68,  72 ;  effect  on  activity  of  man, 
65;  effect  on  Englishmen  in  Virginia, 
274;  effect  on  race,  45;  cold  wave,  69; 
sudden  transition  of,  62;  summer,  of 
Naples ;  winter,  of  Moscow,  73 ;  varia 
tions  of,  their  influence  upon  man,  59; 
use  of  tobacco  result  of,  63. 

Climatic  influence,  56;  qualities,  trans- 
mittible  through  interracial  mar 
riages,  56;  variation  in  the  United 
States,  71. 


Clothes,  colors  of,  among  the  Puritans, 
196. 

Cold,  mental  effect  of,  60. 

Cold  wave,  effect  on  immigrant,  69 ;  ex 
planation  of,  69 ;  feature  of  American 
climate,  70. 

Colonial  ancestry,  American,  201. 

Colonial  Conference,  political  conse 
quences  of,  396. 

Colonial  life,  individual  in,  264. 

Colonies,  American,  aggression  not 
feared,  350;  as  members  of  a  family, 
408;  contribution  to  nation  by  eight 
earliest,  378;  dumping  ground  for 
criminals  and  paupers,  288;  each 
founded  for  reason  and  purpose  of  its 
own,  275 ;  ever  easily  led ;  hard  to  drive, 
366;  formed  as  branch  of  settlement 
already  established,  338;  founded  with 
high  purpose,  326 ;  golden  age  of,  220, 
226 ;  no  effort  to  incorporate  nor  con 
quer  one  another,  349 ;  Massachusetts, 
Virginia,  Maryland  compared,  276; 
Penn's  services  to,  397;  republican 
government  of,  384;  same  considera 
tions  influenced  North  and  South,  394 ; 
withheld  from  war  without  consent  of 
home  government,  317;  without  manu 
factures  ideal  to  English  merchants, 
325. 

Colonists,  American,  absorb  character 
istics  of  new  land,  85;  and  Indians, 
352;  character  molded  by  Indian  war 
fare,  350 ;  claimed  rights  as  Englishmen 
of  English  Crown,  383 :  commercial  ra 
ther  than  artistic,  89;  comparative 
comfort  among,  202;  complaints  of, 
382 ;  danger  from  enemies,  204 ;  English 
view  of,  321 ;  fear  of  accession  of  Wil 
liam  of  Orange,  299 ;  frontier  universal 
feature  of,  312 ;  housing  of,  201 ;  motive 
of  settlement,  84;  not  divested  of  na 
tionality,  381;  outgrew  their  institu 
tions,  320;  permanent  character  of 
settlement,  87;  rough,  boisterous,  fond 
of  horse-play,  74;  struggle  for  support, 
204;  term  of  disdain  in  England,  265. 

Colonization,  English,  no  colony  feared 
invasion  or  rapacity  from  their  own 
blood,  350;  in  Maryland  centred  in 
cities,  325;  in  South  Carolina,  325;  in 


428 


INDEX 


Virginia,  estates  not  cities  or  towns, 
325;  method  of,  varies  with  physical 
conformation  of  section,  235 ;  modern 
political  philosophy  of,  begins  in 
America,  86;  Roman  and  English  con 
trasted,  86;  spread  through  persecu 
tion  in  Massachusetts,  365. 

Comity,  international,  violation  of,  18. 

Commerce  and  love  of  gain  in  English 
man  made  for  nobler  qualities  in  pio 
neer,  305;  in  Virginia,  264 ;  of  England, 
ambition  of  every  Englishman,  329; 
with  New  England  and  West  Indies, 
developed  through  Carolina  settle 
ment,  310. 

Commonwealth,  transition  to  Monarchy, 
politico-religious  consequences  of, 
300. 

Communication,  freedom  of,  isolates  no 
section  of  the  United  States,  316. 

Communities,  older,  constantly  aban 
doned  to  begin  life  anew  in  America, 
316. 

Confederation,  Great,  the,  germ  of,  in 
Colonial  Conference,  396. 

Connecticut,  became  strongest  political 
structure  on  the  continent,  343 ;  begin 
ning  of  branch  colonization  in  new  soil, 
338;  colony  of  allied  towns,  339;  consti 
tution,  miniature  constitution  of  na 
tion,  342;  constitution,  model  on  which 
the  Constitution  of  the  United  States 
founded,  341;  gave  compromise  of 
representation  to  Constitution  of  U  S., 
342;  settlement  of,  began  chapter  of 
Indian  warfare,  350;  protest  of  dissi 
dents  against  iron-clad  theocracy,  337. 

Connecticut  and  Rhode  Island,  begin 
ning  of  liberty  of  conscience,  378. 

Constitution,  American,  see  also  United 
States,  Constitution  of,  148,  150,  172, 
272,  342. 

Constitution,  first  written  one  in  Amer 
ica,  340. 

Constitution,  the  Puritan,  146, 150. 

Constitutions  made  for  men,  not  men 
for  constitutions,  320. 

Controversy,  means  of  education  among 
Puritans,  152. 

Conventions,  disciplinary  effect  of,  375. 

Convicts,  number  of,  in  Maryland,  288. 


Copley,  Sir  Lionel,  Governor  of  Mary 
land,  300. 

Cotton,  influence  on  lives  and  character 
of  cultivators,  321. 

Cotton,  John,  153,  281,  339,  357. 

Court,  among  Puritans,  autocratic  au 
thority  of,  363. 

"  Crackers,"  "  mean  whites  "  of  Georgia, 
336. 

Cranmer,  Archbishop  of  Canterbury, 
117. 

Creed  in  the  colonies  more  important 
than  ethics  of  religion,  301;  of  the 
Puritan,  155. 

Creeds,  exotic  and  mysterious,  144. 

Criminals  and  paupers  shipped  to  Amer 
ica,  288;  range  of  offense  in  "crimi 
nal"  classes,  289. 

Criticism,  European,  of  America,  25,  37. 

Criticism  of  Americans  by  Americans, 
27. 

Cromwell,  108,  263. 

Crown,  responsibility  of,  for  colonial 
quarrels,  383. 

Crown  and  governors  failed  to  grasp 
the  inevitable  import  of  development 
of  colonies,  320. 

Customs,  universality  of  certain,  34. 

Cynicism,  78. 

Dale,  Sir  Thomas,  letter  to  Earl  of  Salis 
bury,  222 ;  opens  Virginia  to  all  sorts 
and  conditions  of  labor,  223 ;  inaugu 
rates  individual  land  ownership  in 
Virginia,  228. 

Darwin,  adaptation  of  species  to  cli 
mate,  50;  influence  of  conditions  upon 
physical  development,  49. 

Davenport,  John,  344. 

Davis  and  Pate,  leaders  of  rebellion  in 
Maryland,  hanged,  294. 

Declaration  of  Independence,  first  un 
answerable  assertion  that  a  new  people 
had  come  into  existence,  136;  fore 
shadowed  by  Hooker's  sermon,  340; 
influence  of  Calvinism  upon  signers, 
124. 

Delaware,  settled  by  Dutch,  407. 

Demagogue,  the,  159. 

Democracy,  arose  from  religious  ele 
ment  in  Puritan  colonization,  116; 


INDEX 


429 


assumed  its  most  distinctly  American 
features  in  frontier  life.  308;  auto 
cratic  rule  of  Church  shaken  by,  338; 
birth  of,  in  Hartford,  341;  in  Rhode 
Island  colony,  375 ;  moral  and  psycho 
logical  effects  of,  34 ;  not  born  in  New 
England  but  on  English  soil,  131 ; 
philosophic  principle  of,  338 ;  progress 
from  Calvinism,  130;  seed  planted  a 
century  and  a  half  before  fruits  visi 
ble,  261;  spur  to  initiative,  76;  uuor- 
dained  by  God,  339. 

Destiny,  10,  12. 

Development,  spiritual,  79. 

Diaries,  pathos  in,  164. 

Dickens,  type  for  caricature  in  "  Yan 
kee,"  343. 

Dignity  and  power  of  man  increased  as 
tradition  questioned,  371. 

Discipline,  drastic,  of  Puritan  laws,  387. 

Discontent,  colonial,  cause  of,  266. 

Distances,  relative,  of  colonial  times, 
389. 

Diversions  of  idle  rich,  in  America,  23; 
in  London,  in  Rome,  24. 

Doctrine  and  dogma,  Penn  distinguishes 
between,  396. 

Doctrine  of  equality  of  man,  foundation 
of  Penn's  character,  396. 

Dogma,  popular  abhorrence  of  deviation 
from,  281. 

Dogmas  and  sacraments  foreign  to 
Quaker  faith,  401 

Dogmatic  creed,  Puritan  submission  to, 
360. 

Dogmatism,  deviation  from,  punished, 
345. 

Doyle,  description  of  Gorton,  367;  on 
Baltimore's  charter,  277;  on  Puritan 
blending  of  civil  and  ecclesiastical 
affairs,  365. 

Draco  and  Solon,  codes  of,  147. 

Drama  of  1776,  might  have  been  averted 
by  tact  and  sympathy  toward  colonists, 
266. 

Dress,  indicative  of  rank,  192,  194;  regu 
lated  by  law  in  Massachusetts  Colony, 
193. 

Dudley,  deputy  governor  of  Massachu 
setts,  letter  to  Countess  of  Lincoln, 
142. 


Dutch,  Act  of  Abjuration,  393;  adopt 
English  method  of  settlement,  388; 
and  English  colonists,  contrast  of, 
380;  civilization,  in  America,  overlaid 
with  English  institutions,  378;  civili 
zation,  in  America  succumbed  before 
race  with  genius  to  govern,  378 ;  colo 
nies,  not  sources  of  Republican  gov 
ernment  and  American  institutions, 
386;  colonies,  state  of  perpetual  tute 
lage  by  home  government,  3#6;  colo 
nists,  unambitious  and  stolid,  390; 
commerce  not  conquest,  ambition  of, 
386;  East  and  West  India  Companies, 
charter  of,  386;  governors,  autocratic 
power  of,  387 ;  Irving's  description  of, 
387;  heroic  struggle  against  Philip  II, 
392 ;  in  America,  no  inclination  to  in 
dependent  branch  colonies,  390 ;  inef 
fectual  in  a  new  land,  392 ;  ineptitude 
for  colonization,  391;  learn  coloniza 
tion  from  the  English,  388;  mere 
traders,  379;  narrow  in  maintenance 
of  one  religion,  388;  overlords,  love  of 
ease  distinguishing  characteristic, 
391;  placid  contentment  of,  385;  puz 
zling  and  curious  study,  392 ;  refugees 
in  England,  121 ;  settlers  in  Delaware 
massacred  by  Indians,  407 ;  slow  growth 
of  population  among,  389;  stadtholders 
governed  by  paper  proclamations, 
384;  system  of  land  tenure,  390;  trans 
mitted  no  characteristic  to  American 
civilization,  379;  traders,  not  colonists, 
386;  unfitness  for  colonization,  389; 
victory  over  Spain,  last  martial  effort, 
386;  virile,  industrious,  undegenerate, 
yet  without  influence  as  colonizers, 
392 ;  West  India  Company,  380;  without 
vigorous  sense  of  nationality,  380. 

"Dutchmen,"  colloquial  term  for  Ger 
man,  404. 

Dutch  Republic,  little  influence  on 
American  Republic,  393. 

Economics,  modern, continue  methodsof 
Puritan  theocracy,  168. 

Education  in  Maryland,  291,292 ;  popular, 
destructive  to  theocratic  rule,  171 ; 
universal,  opposed  to  Calvinistic  sys 
tem,  171. 


430 


INDEX 


Edwards,  Jonathan,  348. 

Effingham,  Lord  Howard  of,  262. 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  reign  of,  117 ;  champion 
of  Protestantism,  118;  pretext  for  exe 
cution  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  119. 

Elizabethan  age,  41. 

Elson  quoted,  312. 

Emigrant,  either  devil  loving  or  God 
fearing,  231. 

"Emigrants"  from  New  England  to 
other  colonies,  402. 

Encroachments  of  rights  as  Englishmen 
led  colonists  to  Revolution,  382. 

Endicott,  Governor,  intolerance  of,  177. 

Energy,  54. 

England,  aesthetic  civilization  of,  not 
transplanted  to  America,  90;  compared 
with  the  United  States,  31 ;  conditions 
in  stimulated  emigration  to  colonies, 
229 ;  eighteenth  century  in,  31 ;  forces 
of  progress  and  reaction,  295;  growth 
of  criminal  class  in,  229;  military  ser 
vice,  church,  and  bar  gave  distinction 
as  well  as  politics,  297 ;  no  cessation  of 
Sunday  labor,  155 ;  of  Cromwell,  a  re 
public,  384;  two  schools  of  political 
thought,  295;  unconsciously  incited 
colonists  to  rebellion,  261 ;  vain  hope  of 
Virginia's  support  for  Restoration, 
271 ;  yardstick  of  comparison  for  Amer 
ica,  26. 

English,  achievement,  era  of,  118;  ad 
venturers  looked  to  Georgia  for  divi 
dends,  329;  and  Dutch  colonies,  popu 
lation  compared,  389;  and  Dutch 
colonists,  contrast  of  rights,  386;  and 
French  Revolutions,  methods  of,  in 
dicative  of  racial  differentiation,  128; 
aristocracy,  an  elastic  institution,  245; 
as  colonizers,  87;  blinded  by  conceit, 
267;  character,  128;  effect  of  liberty  of 
conscience  in  Rhode  Island  on,  376; 
civilization,  overlaid  transient  cus 
toms  of  Dutch,  378;  civilization,  stable 
condition  of,  33;  civilization,  trans 
mission  to  American  colonies,  32;  im 
minent  sense  of  personal  liberty,  361 ; 
colonial  policy,  325 ;  colonies,  Georgia 
most  discontented  of,  335;  colonies, 
power  in  charters  of,  385;  colonies, 
stern  methods  of,  388 ;  colonists,  defi 


nite  revolt  against  oppression,  393; 
colonists,  demanded  safeguards  and 
political  freedom  of  Englishmen  in 
England,  382 ;  colonists,  effect  of  Amer 
ican  climate  on,  73;  colonists  in  Vir 
ginia,  effect  of  climate  on,  274;  colo 
nists,  laws  expression  of  own  require 
ments,  387 ;  colonists,  political  ties  with 
England,  380;  colonists,  transition 
from  towns  and  villages  to  wilderness, 
72;  influence  on  America,  26;  insular 
ity,  265 ;  mind  taught  cunning  of  sav 
age  in  America,  352;  moral  strength 
became  political  force  in  America, 
131 ;  occupation  of  New  York  changed 
land  tenure,  390;  politics,  corruption 
of,  27;  quality  of  assimilation,  135; 
resistance  to  fact,  not  to  phantom  of 
abstract  thought,  128 ;  rule  in  America, 
weakness  of,  320 ;  sovereign  beheaded, 
assertion  of  rights  of  people,  384 ;  sov 
ereign,. colonies  lost  to,  for  infringe 
ment  of  rights  as  Englishmen,  384; 
statesmen  made  no  provision  for  ex 
pansion  of  colonies,  320. 

English  colonization,  judicious  mixture 
of  theology  and  greed,  93. 

Englishmen,  in  America,  33;  adapta 
tion  to  extremes  of  temperature,  62; 
comparison  with  Latin,  Celt,  and  Teu 
ton,  305;  gradually  casts  off  political 
traditions  of  England,  271 ;  imperious 
demand  for  self-government,  390;  in 
Connecticut,  marked  individuality  of, 
342 ;  in  England,  part  of  dynastic  and 
military  forces,  296;  in  Massachusetts 
no  different  from  Englishman  in  Lon 
don,  175;  in  Virginia  and  Massachu 
setts  from  the  same  social  stratum, 
217;  loses  his  insularity,  67;  mental  at 
titude  toward  injustice,  that  of  Eng 
lishmen  in  England,  381 ;  perpetuated 
rights  and  privileges  won  in  England, 
298 ;  phlegmatic  yet  possessed  of  desire 
for  adventure,  305. 

English  people,  the,  their  power  unreal 
ized  until  the  rebellion,  131 ;  evolution 
from  serfdom  to  warrior  for  spiritual 
freedom,  132. 

English  politics,  corruption  of,  27, 28, 29, 
30. 


INDEX 


431 


English  race,  ambition  rises  above  smug 
complacency,  268. 

Entail  and  primogeniture,  248,  261. 

Entangling  alliances,  birth  of  a  national 
polity,  272. 

Enterprise,  fertility  of  soil  promotes,  58. 

Enthusiasm,  strength  of  great  social 
movements,  376. 

Environment,  affects  transplanted  race, 
47 ;  effect  of,  56 ;  effect  on  Englishman's 
political  traditions,  271 ;  modifies  char 
acter,  56. 

Equality  of  man,  Penn's  doctrine  of, 
3%. 

Estates  in  Dutch  colony  compared  with 
manorial  system  of  Virginia  and  Mary 
land,  390. 

Europe,  filled  up  reservoir  of  American 
population  with  emigrant  stream,  315; 
spirit  of,  in  colonial  times,  349;  wars 
in,  following  English  settlement  of 
America,  44. 

European  criticism  of  America,  25,  37. 

European  powers  fought  their  battles  in 
America,  317. 

European  writers,  attitude  of,  toward 
America,  24. 

Evolution,  animal,  vegetable,  and  na 
tional,  20. 

Exaggeration,  a  national  weakness,  74; 
reason  for  in  America,  75. 

Exeter,  founded  by  followers  of  Anne 
Hutchinson,  406. 

Experience,  channel  of  knowledge  for 
race  as  for  individual,  21 ;  futility  of, 
22. 

Extravagance,  emotional  and  physical 
and  material  hatred  of,  by  Puritan,  399. 

Extremists  in  intellectual  liberty,  reac 
tion  from  theocracy,  372. 

Faith,  Quaker,  simplicity  of,  401. 

Families,  316. 

Farmer  and  agricultural  labor,  59. 

Federation  of  independent  towns  by 
wanderers  from  Massachusetts,  341. 

Ferrero  quoted,  40. 

Fertility  of  American  soil,  spirit  of  en 
terprise  due  to,  58. 

Fisher,  Mary,  177. 

Fiske  quoted,  304,  308,  368. 


Fletcher,  suggested  political  liberty  to 
Dutch,  385. 

Food,  scarcity  of,  in  Plymouth  colony, 
203. 

Foreign  blood,  fusion  of,  in  South  Caro 
lina  foreshadowed  national  absorption 
of  races  a  century  later,  314 ;  tinctured 
rather  than  colored  English  in  South 
ern  colonies,  402. 

Foreigner,  his  advantage  in  writing 
history,  15;  his  influence  in  America, 
20,  77;  absorbed  by  English,  134;  rapid 
merging  of,  in  America,  58. 

"  Foreigners,"  colonists  so  considered 
by  Englishmen,  265. 

Formalism,  absence  of,  in  Quaker  faith, 
401. 

Formalistic  religion,  most  impeditive  in 
civilized  progress,  370. 

Formulas,  New  England's  first  protest 
against,  358. 

Fox,  eloquence  converted  William  Penn 
to  Quakerism,  397;  teachings  of,  domi 
nating  forces  in  Pennsylvania,  400. 

Foxe's  Book  of  Martyrs,  121. 

Freedom  and  Catholicism  judged  in 
compatible  in  English  view,  299. 

Freedom  of  religious  belief  brought  in 
genious  moral  codes,  372. 

French  aggression,  first  measures  to 
repel,  396. 

French  as  colonizers,  87. 

Frontier,  first  extended  by  formation  of 
branch  colony,  338;  life  in,  more  ro 
mantic  and  more  sordid  than  on  sea 
board,  308:  life  in  North  Carolina,  312; 
men  lived  in  terror  of  Indian,  353 ;  per 
petual  condition  in  American  history, 
309;  value  of  advancing,  308. 

Fun,  74. 

Furniture,  "genuine  colonial,"  201; 
later  importation  from  England,  203. 

General  Court  at  Hartford,  340. 
Generals,  American,  of  German  birth, 

405. 
George  III  misread  the  success  of  the 

colonies,  266;  indictment  of,  267. 
Georgia,  alluring  picture  of  commercial 

possibilities,  330;  charter,  331;  contest 

for  introduction  of  black  labor,  334; 


432 


INDEX 


"  Crackers,"  335;  failure  of ,  336 ;  mili 
tary  outpost  between  English  and 
Spanish  possessions,  329,  331;  neither 
schools  nor  literature  in,  336;  original 
plan  of,  329;  paupers  in  England  not 
regenerated  by  fresh  start  in,  332; 
quarrel  with  Spain,  332;  romantic  in 
terest  in  founding  as  refuge  for  un 
fortunates,  326 ;  scheme  of  settlement 
had  patronage  of  Church  and  society, 
330;  Scotch  in,  332;  slave  labor  pro 
hibited,  331;  thriftlessness,  crime,  and 
lawlessness  in,  336;  trustees  surrender 
charter,  335 ;  Utopia  in  new  world,  335. 

German  colonists  loyal  to  Republic,  405 ; 
contribution  to  American  character, 
404;  element  in  Pennsylvania,  403; 
immigrant  in  America,  characteris 
tics  of,  404;  immigration,  motives  of, 
404;  in  American  army,  405;  Palatines, 
Maryland's  first  immigrants,  403;  stat 
ure  of  Americans  compared  with,  49. 

God  and  mammon,  copartnership  in 
motive  of  colonization,  329. 

God  instead  of  priest,  judge,  in  eyes  of 
Quaker,  401. 

God  made  man,  but  man  made  the  State 
beyond  Puritan  grasp,  365. 

Goodman  Hunt  and  wife,  banishment 
of,  345. 

Gorton,  Samuel,  367,  368,  369,  371. 

Government,  machinery  of,  263. 

Governors,  colonial,  character  of,  265. 

Governors,  royal,  263,  295,  318. 

Grand  Model,  the,  constitution  of  John 
Locke,  307. 

Grand  Remonstrance,  the,  Declaration 
of  Independence  of  Puritans  in  Eng 
land,  384. 

Gravity,  77. 

Greatness,  America's,  Cavalier's  share 
in,  233;  material  aspiration  and  attain 
ment,  64. 

Greeks  and  Romans,  spell  of  oratory 
among,  149. 

Green  quoted,  122, 123, 130. 

Grigsby,  Hugh  Blair,  pictures  Cavalier 
as  "  slave,"  226. 

Growth,  mental,  wrought  by  slow  and 
gradual  change,  14. 

Growth,  of  a  people,  19;  of  a  race,  21. 


Habits,  the  nature  of  man  himself,  62. 

Harding,  William,  in  case  against  Good 
man  Hunt  and  wife,  345. 

Hartford,  colony  of,  bigotry  in,  rare, 
346;  counterpart  of  Plymouth  Pil 
grims,  344;  settlement  of,  337;  suffrage 
in,  345. 

Hatred,  achievements  founded  upon, 
104. 

Heat,  54;  effects  of,  mentally  and  physi 
cally,  62;  influences  on  character  of 
labor  employed,  322 ;  physiological  ef 
fects,  63 ;  suffering  caused  by,  62. 

Heresiarchs,  treatment  of,  in  America 
and  England,  356. 

Heretic,  abomination  of  all  creeds,  279 ; 
extermination  of,  a  matter  of  con 
science,  281;  hatred  of,  enjoined  by 
assiduous  teachings  of  centuries,  281 ; 
sole  refuge  in  America,  Maryland,  281. 

Heroic  era  of  prowess  in  conflict  of  colo 
nist  and  Indian,  352. 

Historians,  American,  anti-Puritan,  211. 

Historians,  visualizing  past  by  present 
light,  383. 

Historical  movements,  imperceptible 
influence  of,  127. 

Historical  psychologist,  difficulties  of, 
36. 

Historical  psychology,  comparison  as 
basis  of,  36 ;  study  of  motives  and  re 
mote  causes,  66. 

History,  nothing  miraculous  or  haphaz 
ard  in,  21;  perennially  weaves  same 
pattern,  248 ;  perspective  of,  value  and 
limitations,  97;  present  reproduces 
past,  27;  repetition  of  errors  in,  22; 
turning  point  of,  119;  wheel  of,  22, 121, 
157,  365;  written  on  palimpsest,  21. 

Hoar,  Senator,  on  Bradford's  History, 
203 ;  on  difference  between  Puritan  and 
Pilgrim,  100;  simile  of  Pilgrim  and 
Mayflower,  103. 

Holland,  provinces  of,  divided  in  ambi 
tion  to  detriment  of  single  Common 
wealth,  394. 

Holmes,  Obadiah,  whipping  of,  172. 

Home,  as  now  conceived  creation  of  the 
Puritan,  154. 

Homogeneity  of  English  race  in  America, 
402. 


INDEX 


433 


Hooker,  Thomas,  171;  finds  supporters 
in  belief  in  democracy,  338 ;  leader  of 
migration  to  Connecticut,  339;  sermon, 
foreshadowing  basic  truths  of  Decla 
ration  of  Independence,  340. 

Hospitality,  origin  of  bundling  in  New 
England,  347. 

House  of  Commons,  assertion  of  rights 
against  king  prototype  of  colonial  re 
bellion,  294;  power  of  Puritans  cur 
tailed  in,  127. 

House  of  Representatives,  342. 

Huguenots,  307,  402. 

Human  action  proved  by  Bible  among 
Puritans,  365. 

Hume  quoted,  156. 

Humor,  74,  75. 

Hutchinson,  Anne,  358,  359,  362,  363,  364. 

Hutchinson,  Colonel,  memoirs  of,  187, 
190. 

Hypocrisy,  national,  79. 

Iced  water,  climatic  explanation  of  use 
in  America,  63. 

Idealism,  of  Americans,  17. 

Idle  Rich,  23. 

Imagination,  72,  74,  95. 

Immigration,  beginning  of,  311;  Ger 
man,  404;  in  colonies,  402;  in  New 
York  and  Pennsylvania,  402;  interco 
lonial,  315;  religious  refugees,  changed 
to  adventurers  and  commerce  seekers, 
404. 

Imprisonment  for  debt  in  England,  328. 

Indentured  servants  in  Virginia,  224. 

Independence,  Dutch,  meant  change  of 
rulers;  English,  self-government,  393; 
gift  of  English,  379;  New  Haven  colo 
nists  assume,  as  inherent  right,  344; 
modern  conception  of,  unknown  to 
Puritans,  383;  of  American  colonies, 
350. 

Indians,  cant  of  solicitude  for,  95;  ex 
termination  of ,  inevitable,  353;  fear  of, 
saved  American  colonist  from  physi 
cal  softness,  351 ;  killing  of,  by  Puritans 
explained,  183;  made  the  colonist  a 
good  soldier,  351 ;  respect  for  enemy  in 
ratio  to  cruelty  displayed,  352;  slaves 
in  South  Carolina,  317;  stimulated 
qualities  in  colonists,  379;  subordinate 


cause  to  influence  American  civiliza 
tion,  350;  taught  his  cunning  to  Eng 
lishman,  352 ;  torture  of  white  captives, 
175;  warfare  in  America,  350;  warfare 
left  lasting  mark  on  character  of  colo 
nists,  350. 

Indifference,  78. 

Indigo  supplanted  by  cotton  in  South 
Carolina,  321. 

Individualism,  American,  in  early  days, 
65 ;  natural  progression  of  that  already 
developed  in  England,  295. 

Initiative,  76;  how  developed,  64. 

Inquiry,  spirit  of,  turning  point  in  his 
tory  of  nation,  371. 

Insanity  among  women  in  Western  farm 
houses,  59;  caused  by  isolation.  59;  in 
Alaska,  60;  inciting  cause  of,  61. 

Institutions,  cohesive  strength  of,  on 
community,  375. 

Intelligent  tyranny  of  Puritan  colonists, 
387. 

Irish  Catholics  in  America,  285. 

Irish  emigration,  beginning  of,  402. 

Irish  Tories  sent  to  Virginia,  224. 

Irving,  on  Dutch  governors  of  New 
Netherlands,  387;  on  illegitimacy  and 
bundling,  348. 

James  I,  his  obduracy  lays  foundation 
for  Puritan  America,  138. 

Jamestown,  controlling  object  of  settle 
ment,  92;  founded,  215. 

Jefferson,  Thomas,  254. 

Jenkins,  Captain,  333. 

Johnson,  proprietary  governor  of  South 
Carolina  deposed,  318. 

Juries  forbidden  in  New  Haven,  345. 

Justice,  marked  spirit  of,  in  America, 
349;  mockery  of  court  trial  among 
Puritans,  357 ;  robbed  of  terror  in  colo 
nial  life,  264. 

Know-Nothingism,  political  influence 
of,  286. 

Labor,  160;  false  doctrine  of,  in  South 
Carolina,  323 ;  free  white,  under  stigma 
where  slavery  thrives,  289. 

Labor  legislation,  beginning  of,  in  Puri 
tan  Sunday,  160. 


434 


INDEX 


Land  hunger  made  Englishmen  coloniz 
ers  and  conquerers,  305. 

Landing  place  of  English  in  New  Eng 
land,  sentiment  of,  408. 

Landowners,  large,  created  by  feudal 
and  patriarchal  states  of  society,  291. 

Latimer's  prophecy,  117. 

Law,  advance  from  unwritten  law  to 
formal  codification,  146 ;  basis  of  civil 
ized  society,  146;  codes  of  Draco  and 
Solon  interpret  distinct  phases  in 
Athenian  development,  147;  colonial, 
although  harsh  in  light  of  modern 
liberality,  was  in  tune  with  spirit  of 
time,  270;  faulty  but  conscientious, 
387;  framed  by  settlers  themselves, 
386;  in  rudimentary  state,  customs 
and  traditions  take  the  place  of,  146; 
juries  forbidden  in  New  Haven,  345; 
reflect  mentality  of  creators,  147. 

Law  courts,  parody  of  justice  among 
Puritans,  357. 

Laws  to  guard  against  temptations  of 
the  flesh,  346. 

Leaders,  Puritan,  conscientiously  con 
tentious,  355. 

Legislation  for  the  benefit  of  British 
merchant,  266. 

Leisler,  Jacob,  395. 

Leroy-Beaulieu  quoted,  59,  148. 

Lexington  and  Bunker's  Hill,  no  imme 
diate  poetical  celebration  of,  80. 

Lexington  and  Concord,  137. 

Liberal  thinkers  among  conglomeration 
of  sects,  371. 

Liberality,  distinction  of  Roger  Wil 
liams,  354. 

Liberty,  common  goal  of  Puritan  and 
Cavalier,  246. 

Liberty  and  license,  distinction  of,  373. 

Locke,  John,  307. 

Low,  on  Parliamentary  Elections,  29. 

Lowell,  Holmes,  Emerson,  Hawthorne, 
Whittier,  209. 

Luther,  belief  in  witchcraft,  180;  preem 
inently  human,  158. 

Lyon,  Hannah,  194. 

Lynching,  31. 

•Macaulay  on  English  aristocracy,  245 ;  on 
Puritanism,  130. 


Machinery  of  government,  263. 

Manorial  system,  the,  in  Maryland,  290. 

Marblehead,  survival  of  bundling  in, 
348. 

Marmalet-Madames,  romance  in  Puritan 
times,  166. 

Marriage  among  Puritans,  economic  ne 
cessity,  166. 

Mary,  Queen,  of  England,  martyrs  in 
reign  of,  117. 

Maryland,  282;  aristocratic  class  in,  292; 
asylum  for  Roman  Catholics,  298 ;  at 
tempted  rebellion  in,  294;  Catholics 
predominated  among  original  colo 
nists,  278 ;  charter,  284 ;  connecting  link 
between  North  and  South,  275;  con 
victs  in,  288 ;  education  in,  292 ;  extraor 
dinary  power  vested  in  proprietor, 
277;  first  mention  of  Catholic  priests 
in  English  colonization,  278;  founders 
of  better  calibre  than  in  Virginia,  287; 
horse-racing  and  cock-fighting,  291, 
293;  liberality  result  of  compromise 
between  conviction  and  necessity,  279; 
manorial  system,  290 ;  only  colony 
founded  as  refuge  for  Roman  Cath 
olics,  275;  only  place  under  English 
rule  where  religious  sects  were  unmo 
lested,  280;  political  views  modified  by 
decline  of  demand  for  slave  labor,  289; 
Protestants  in,  300;  Puritan  influence, 
287;  religion  in,  278;  ripe  for  rebellion 
before  Massachusetts  or  Virginia,  304; 
slaves,  290,  292;  tobacco,  290,  291;  toler 
ance  a  matter  of  expediency  and  pol 
icy,  280,285;  toleration  act,  281;  treat 
ment  of  heretics,  281 ;  wheat,  289. 

Maryland  and  Massachusetts,  analogy 
in  religious  freedom  as  object  of,  276. 

Maryland  and  Virginia,  289,  290,  292. 

Massachusetts,  Cambridge  Synod  de 
fines  relationship  toward  England,  382 ; 
colonists  held  to  coast  by  mountains, 
235;  Catholics  and  Episcopalians  dis 
franchised,  281;  democratic  through 
method  of  settlement,  249;  denied 
liberty  of  conscience  to  Catholics,  283 ; 
early  settlers  were  road-builders,  227; 
enforced  unity  of  belief  according  to 
intolerance  of  time,  281 ;  first  resistance 
of  England,  136;  first  to  found  branch 


INDEX 


435 


colony,  338 ;  gave  Puritanism  and  vital 
institutions  to  nation,  378 ;  institutions 
result  of  town  settlement,  250 ;  minis 
ters  of,  in  early  days  lawgivers  as  well 
as  teachers,  360;  political  community 
on  a  basis  of  religious  tyranny,  374; 
Quakers  scourged,  281 ;  reproduced  Ro 
man  city-state,  249;  society  attacked 
by  Roger  Williams,  356;  tyranny  of, 
drove  colonists  to  Rhode  Island,  373; 
wanderers  from,  found  first  demo 
cratic  form  of  government  in  Amer 
ica,  341 ;  wealth  commercial  not  landed, 
249;  witches,  178,  180. 

Massachusetts  and  Virginia,  effort  in 
both  colonies  to  check  governors  for 
encroachments  of  liberty,  266 ;  defiance 
of  English  authority  in  both,  246;  dif 
ference  between  soldier  of  fortune  and 
austere  man  of  conscience,  95;  differ 
ent  physical  and  economic  conditions, 
226;  economic  not  social  causes  devel 
oped  distinction,  249;  institutions  re 
sult  of  difference  between  town  and 
plantation  settlement,  250;  mother  to 
a  race  of  giants,  377 ;  religious  differ 
entiation  of,  251;  same  stock,  same 
ideals,  246. 

Massasoit,  state  reception  of,  112. 

Master  and  slave,  relation  of,  in  South 
Carolina,  323. 

Material  aspiration,  64;  spiritual  strug 
gles  with,  17. 

Mather,  Cotton,  366. 

Mayflower,  character  of  passengers,  88 ; 
descent  from  passenger  list,  201 ;  fur 
niture  and  heirlooms,  201;  homespun 
passengers  not  touched  with  genius  on 
reaching  America,  133;  passengers 
settlers  and  not  transients,  85;  record 
of  cargo,  202. 

Maypole  in  England,  205. 

"  Mean  whites,"  maleficent  influence  on 
South,  242;  "white  trash"  in  South, 
257. 

Mecklenburg  resolution,  not  precursor 
of  Declaration  of  Independence,  313. 

Mediocrity,  resents  a  fixed  idea,  210. 

Meeting-house,  heart  of  independent 
state  of  Puritan,  406. 

Melancholy,  American  prone  to,  74,  77. 


Men,  character  of,  not  made  by  cod 
dling,  335. 

Menendez,  Adelelantado,  307,  317. 

Mennonites  and  Tunkers,  403. 

Merchants,  English,  legislation  in  favor 
of,  266. 

Merry  England,  sports  in,  205. 

Migration  from  Massachusetts  colony, 
mixed  character  of,  339. 

^Migratory  movement,  controlled  by 
hope  of  betterment,  404;  from  Middle 
West  to  West,  317;  impulse  in 
America,  315. 

Military  initiative  in  Americans,  351. 

Milton,  188. 

Mind,  American,  the,  commercial  in 
stinct  of,  13;  keen,  alert,  69. 

Ministers,  among  Puritans,  lawgivers  as 
well  as  teachers,  360;  of  Church  of 
England,  low  estate  of,  126. 

Minuit,  Peter,  407. 

Miracle  used  to  explain  Puritan  states- 
mancraft,  133. 

Mixed  blood,  56. 

Mixture  of  sects  in  Massachusetts 
colony,  371. 

Montgomery,  Sir  Robert,  327,  329. 

Morality  of  intellect  as  foundation  of 
religion,  401. 

Morals,  conventional  standards  of,  22; 
early  American,  reflection  of  religious 
bigotry  in  Europe,  173;  modern  and 
ancient  compared,  23. 

Mourt,  on  origin  of  Thanksgiving,  208. 

Mourt's  "Relation,"  details  of  May 
flower  cargo,  112. 

Nation,  advance  of,  371 ;  aspirations  and 
ideals  assure  survival  of,  109;  in  the 
founding  of  a,  men  of  gentle  nature 
have  no  place,  104;  unconscious  of 
subtle  progress  of  historical  move 
ment  until  climax,  127. 

Nationalities,  all  absorbed  into  the  Eng 
lish,  134;  merging  of,  58. 

Nationality,  sense  of,  in  English  and 
Dutch,  379. 

Nature,  character  affected  by,  73;  com 
pelling  or  relaxing  effect  of  man  ac 
cording  to  climate,  65;  effect  of,  on 
the  pioneer,  83;  from  Puritan  point  of 


436 


INDEX 


view,  83;  human,  fundamentally  un 
changed,  22 ;  influence  of,  on  American 
race  development,  64;  mechanical  pro 
cess  of,  22;  never  ending  war  with 
man,  73 ;  struggle  against,  47. 

Natural  law,  fallacy  of,  33. 

Natural  phenomena,  effect  on  American, 
46. 

Naval  warfare  between  English  and 
Spanish  colonists  in  America,  333. 

Navigation  Act,  219,  310. 

Neal,  estimates  money  transferred  to 
American  colonies,  113;  tribute  to 
character  of  Puritan  emigrant,  115. 

Negroes,  323,  379. 

New  Amsterdam,  variety  of  languages 
in  streets  of,  403. 

Newcastle,  Duke  of,  30. 

New  England,  alien  element  in,  402; 
birth  rate  in,  402;  carriages  in  Boston, 
221;  climate,  benefit  to  colonists,  69; 
colonists,  fecund  people,  402;  colonists 
not  miraculously  transformed  in 
crossing  Atlantic.  133;  disapproval  of 
Catholics  persisted  after  colonial 
period,  283;  disregard  of  periodical 
fast  and  feast  days  in,  208;  earliest 
protest  against  formulas,  358;  effect 
of  climate  upon  settlers,  63;  gay  circle 
around  governors,  221;  ground  con 
tested  by  aborigines,  351 ;  immigration 
from,  recognized  as  desirable  by  South 
Carolina,  314;  its  people  lived  in  city 
and  settlement,  220,  226 ;  Maypole  ob 
servances,  206;  migration  from,  316; 
miniature  court  in  Boston,  221;  people 
of,  homogeneous  race  and  fecund,  402 ; 
Puritanism,  in  essence  a  form  of  slav 
ery,  400 ;  search  for  lucrative  trade  re 
sponsible  for  first  colony  in  North 
Carolina,  306;  settlement,  church  re 
public,  406;  war  code,  same  as  that 
observed  in  Old  England,  182;  wolf 
baiting,  206. 

New  Englanders,  "  Yankees,"  343. 

New  England  and  Virginia,  correspond 
ence  of  time  and  cause  of  settlement 
and  population,  243. 

New  Englander  and  Virginian,  tradi 
tional  contrast,  220. 

New  Hampshire,  366,  406,  408. 


New  Haven,  founded,  343;  formed  by 
union  of  smaller  towns,  344;  laws  of, 
346 ;  suffrage  confined  to  church  mem 
bers,  345;  theocratic  government  of, 
345. 

New  Jersey,  408. 

New  Netherlands,  no  asylum  for  creeds, 
388;  no  loyalty  to  home  country,  380; 
soil  cultivated  by  white  labor,  391. 

New  race,  the,  physical  and  spiritual  de 
velopment,  79. 

Newspapers,  74,  292;  their  attacks  on 
public  men,  77;  unconscious  humor  of, 
76;  vocabulary  of  superlatives,  74. 

New  York,  alien  element  in  population 
of,  402 ;  Dutch  colony  of,  without  im 
press  on  American  nation,  378;  lan 
guages  spoken  in,  403. 

New  York  and  Pennsylvania,  father 
and  tutor  to  American  race,  377. 

Neman's  Land,  307. 

Non-conformism,  influenced  character 
more  than  all  other  religio-social 
movements,  398. 

Non-conformists,  all  sects  included  in, 
sprang  from  same  source,  398. 

North  Carolina,  character  of  settlers, 
309 ;  first  to  throw  off  British  authority, 
313 ;  frontier  settlement,  312 ;  immigra 
tion  other  than  English,  311 ;  isolated 
and  backwoods  settlement,  325;  odds 
and  ends  of  humanity  in  settlement 
typical  of  perpetual  migration  in 
America,  315;  taxes  remitted,  309; 
turmoil  in,  311. 

Nullification,  doctrine  of,  319. 

Oglethorpe,  James,  327,  330,  333. 

Oligarchy,  375. 

Opinions,  disturbed  and  destroyed  by 
civilization's  march,  371. 

Oppression  of  court  and  governor  in 
English  colonies,  384. 

Oratory,  American,  traced  to  early  dis 
cussion  and  protest  against  England, 
266. 

Papacy,  395. 

Papist,  Protestant,  Jew,  and  Turk,  posi 
tion  of,  in  Roger  Williams's  ideal  Com 
monwealth,  373. 


INDEX 


437 


Parliament,  struggle  with  king,  262. 

Parliamentary  Commissioners  recognize 
Virginia's  right  to  regulate  her  taxa 
tion,  263. 

Parliamentary  Government,  develop 
ment  of,  in  England,  294. 

Patriotism,  birth  in  Virginia,  273. 

Patroons,  great  estates  of,  in  Dutch 
colonies,  390. 

Peasantry,  white,  absence  of,  in  America, 
238. 

Penn,  William,  as  administrator,  397; 
as  city  builder,  400;  as  diarist,  397; 
character  of,  396;  conversion  of,  397; 
doctrine  of  man,  396;  foremost  among 
the  colony  builders,  397;  ideals  main 
tained,  396;  letters,  essays,  pamphlets 
of,  397;  religious  enthusiast,  397,  399; 
resemblance  to  Baltimore,  396;  self- 
revelation,  397. 

Pennsylvania,  alien  element  in  popula 
tion  of,  402;  brought  to  support  of 
Declaration  of  Independence  by  Ger 
man  element,  405;  "  Dutchmen,"  slow 
ly  assimilated  by  English,  404;  early 
history  of,  redeemed  by  personality  of 
Penn,  379;  intolerance  of  Catholics, 
283 ;  motive  of  founder,  396. 

Pennsylvania  and  Maryland,  religious 
liberality  compared,  396. 

Pennsylvania  and  New  York,  only  colo 
nies  with  strong  alien  element,  402. 

People,  the,  effect  of  early  influences 
on  political  and  social  institutions, 
319;  ignorance  of  masses  strength  of 
feudalism  and  autocracy,  167;  incipi 
ent  realization  of  strength  of,  118;  in 
creased  consciousness  of  their  power, 
261 ;  moral  and  psychological  attitude 
of,  reflects  material  condition  of  coun 
try,  321 ;  power  manifested  in  Puritan 
ism,  130;  power  of,  recognized  through 
Virginia  Assembly,  262;  reform  of, 
frustrated  by  Elizabeth,  127;  rights  of, 
primarily  recognized  in  Puritan  Sun 
day,  161. 

Persecution,  made  Massachusetts  mo 
ther  and  maker  of  states,  365;  Puritan, 
expression  of  morals  of  time,  173 ;  reli 
gious,  174;  political,  made  Cavalier, 
246;  religious,  made  Puritan,  246. 


Persians,  child  training  among,  23. 

Pestilent  seducer,  Massachusetts  term 
for  dissenter,  367,  388. 

Peters,  Rev.  Samuel,  wrote  Blue  Laws  of 
Connecticut,  346. 

Philadelphia,  dignity  and  symmetry  of, 
work  of  Penn,  399. 

Philanthropy  proves  in  vain,  332. 

Philosophy,  modern,  beyond  grasp  of 
Puritan,  365;  of  Quaker,  compared 
with  that  of  Puritanism,  401 ;  partly  de 
veloped,  regarded  as  finality  in  colo 
nial  times,  383. 

Physical,  the,  its  influence  on  the  Amer 
ican  people,  61. 

Physical  research  in  England,  295. 

Physical  selection,  82. 

Pilgrim,  agent  of  fate  in  gentler  mood, 
103;  a  Separatist,  212;  Brownists,  105; 
ceremonies,  color  in,  112;  character, 
circumlocutory  flight  to  America,  sym 
bolic  of,  106;  confusion  with  Puritan, 
207,  298  ;  consumption  among,  73 ;  free 
dom,  liberty,  and  English  speech 
sought  in  America,  107;  gentleness 
undisturbed  by  Puritanism,  349;  had 
separated  from  Church  of  England, 
141 ;  inspiration  to  poet  and  story-tel 
ler,  101,  103,  112;  insularity  of,  made 
stay  in  Holland  intolerable,  106;  made 
slight  impress  on  American  character, 
101 ;  merged  in  Puritan,  102 ;  motive  for 
settlement  in  America,  94 ;  no  rebel  but 
peace-seeker,  106;  not  virile  enough  to 
found  a  race,  102 ;  poetical  conception 
of,  101,  103;  settlers,  not  transients, 
87;  strain  in  Puritan  blood,  softening 
influence  of,  241;  viewed  as  Saxon 
Heptarchy  to  present-day  England, 
101. 

Pioneer,  83 ;  alert  through  living  in  fear 
of  surprise,  351;  enforced  hospitality 
responsible  for  bundling,  347;  rude 
strength  of,  necessary  to  development 
of  country,  320. 

Pistol  carrying,  origin  of  custom,  324. 

Plantation  life,  patriarchal  and  feudal, 
324. 

Plymouth  Pilgrims,  counterpart  in 
Hooker's  colony,  344;  strong  in  reli 
gious  faith,  73. 


438 


INDEX 


Plymouth  Rock,  literal  foundation  of 
new  civilization,  408. 

Poetry,  80. 

Poets,  38,  39,  40. 

Political  and  social  history  of  South 
Carolina  illustrates  formative  effect 
of  early  influence  on  character  of  peo 
ple,  319. 

Political  despotism,  thrives  on  unlet 
tered  masses,  167. 

Political  distinction  one  road  to  fame  in 
colonies,  297. 

Political  idealism  strongly  developed  in 
America,  296. 

Political  independence,  foreign  to  Dutch 
colonists,  385. 

Political  liberty,  defined  by  Roger  Wil 
liams,  374. 

Politico-psychology,  molded  by  early 
colonies,  377. 

Political  science,  not  understood  by  the 
Dutch,  390. 

Political  system,  American,  its  influence 
on  society,  78;  not  dependent  upon 
geographic  limits,  67;  result  of  reform 
in  church  polity,  116 ;  sources  of,  377. 

Political  teachings  of  More,  Hobbes,  and 
Locke,  295. 

Political  union,  American,  beginning  of, 
210. 

Politics,  English,  corruption  in,  27. 

Popular  conception  of  "  Yankee,"  343. 

Popular  discontent  in  England  and  colo 
nies,  383. 

Population  of  New  England  fed  by  new 
English  settlers  and  natural  increase, 
402. 

Portsmouth  and  Newport  established, 
366. 

Practical,  the  spirit  of,  characteristic 
of  Puritanism  and  Quakerism,  397, 
399. 

Press,  slight  influence  in  colonial  times, 
292. 

Priests,  Roman  Catholics,  first  mention 
of,  278. 

Primogeniture  and  entail,  248,  261. 

Printing,  influence  on  popular  move 
ment  in  England,  121. 

Priscilla  and  her  Puritan  sisters  in  a 
romantic  light,  167. 


Progress  and  reaction,  perennial  forces 
in  civilization,  295. 

Proprietors  and  ministers,  carelessness 
of,  stimulated  colonists  to  defensive 
union,  321. 

Prosperity  in  the  United  States  due  to 
freedom  of  communication,  316. 

Protestant  clause  in  Maryland  charter, 
278;  intolerance  in  Maryland,  301. 

Protestantism,  English,  a  political  force 
in  reign  of  Elizabeth,  118;  made  the 
common  people  a  power,  131 ;  militant 
form  of,  120;  safeguard  of  English 
liberties,  120. 

Protestants  regarded  English  Catholics 
as  traitors  to  cause  of  liberty,  299. 

Providence  settled  by  Roger  Williams, 
358. 

Psychologist,  historical,  builds  on  order 
of  consequence  not  dates,  91 ;  distin 
guished  from  historian,  66;  intrinsic 
detachment  from  the  present,  98 ;  work 
of,  minute  analysis  of  historical  fig 
ures,  97. 

Pyschology,  American,  foundation  of, 
380;  influence  of  French  and  Indian 
wars  on,  44;  influence  of  material 
struggle  on,  90. 

Psychology,  national,  difficulties  of  in 
vestigation,  36;  effect  of  conflict  with 
nature  on,  45. 

Psychology,  new,  in  America,  33. 

Psychology  of  a  people,  reflection  of  ma 
terial  condition  of  country,  321. 

Public  opinion  formed  in  Assembly  and 
town  meeting,  292. 

Puritan,  the,  ability  to  concentrate,  210; 
absorbent  mind  of,  152;  adherent  of 
Church  of  England,  212;  American  ig 
norance  of  the  influence  exercised  by, 
9;  artistic  feeling  checked,  90;  at 
tempted  to  cure  abuses,  107;  backed  by 
strong  interests,  113;  basis  of  Ameri 
can  character,  184 ;  belief  in  restricted 
salvation,  176  ;  Bible  his  constitution, 
146;  bilateral,  157;  birth  rate,  82;  cap 
tained  efficiently,  113;  character,  basis 
of,  98, 144 ;  character,  owes  strength  of, 
to  theocracy,  370 ;  character,  revealed 
in  Antinomian  controversy,  364;  char 
acter,  trial  of  Anne  Hutchinson  typi- 


INDEX 


439 


cal  of,  363;  children,  as  restive  under 
religious  instruction  as  children  to 
day,  163;  Church  of  England  man,  107, 
109;  clothes,  189,  197,  199;  colonists, 
differentiation  from  settlers  in  South, 
399;  colonists,  no  poverty  among,  202; 
confusion  with  Pilgrim,  207,  298;  con 
sistent  regard  for  Biblical  commands, 
161 ;  constitution  of,  146 ;  contrast  with 
Mayflower  and  Virginia  colonists,  115; 
court  trial  among,  357;  determined  by 
Biblical  constitution,  147;  democratic, 
192  ;  denied  equality  of  birth  and  in 
tellect,  200;  denounced  popish  super 
stition  and  political  despotism,  but 
substituted  Protestant  superstition 
and  theocratic  despotism,  168;  de 
nounced  theatre  but  saw  no  sin  in 
cock-fighting,  293;  diction,  in  tracts 
diffuse,  151;  in  judgment,  terse,  166; 
difficulty  in  determining  Sabbath  from 
"evening  to  evening,"  153;  dower  of 
grim  intolerance,  345 ;  dress  regulated 
by  law,  193,  199 ;  dry,  sarcastic,  ironic, 
209 ;  educated  by  controversy  and  argu 
ment,  151 ;  education  at  meeting-house 
and  hearthstone,  precursors  of  board 
schools  and  factory  laws,  168 ;  emigra 
tion,  effect  on  England,  113;  essentially 
a  business  man,  12;  establish  commu 
nity  in  Maryland,  287;  exertion  for 
support  necessary,  204;  extravagance 
in  clothes  censured,  191, 196;  but  per 
missible  according  to  income,  194,  199; 
fabled  and  true  estimate  of,  99;  fight 
ing  and  vengeful  elements  in,  108; 
fanatics,  157;  fanaticism  protest 
against  insincere  fanaticism  of  creed 
in  church,  143  ;  ferocity  in  Indian  war 
fare,  182 ;  first  Protestant  founder  of  a 
college  at  an  English  university,  188 ; 
fixed  idea  of,  210 ;  gaming,  dancing  and 
theatre  under  ban  of,  207;  good  and 
evil  attributable  to  hand  of  God,  176 ; 
"  Puritan  gray,"  a  myth,  198;  great  so 
cial  law  of  people's  right  to  education 
revealed  to,  167;  harshness  of,  175; 
heart  of  American  civilization,  97, 216; 
hegira  to  New  World  covered  13  years, 
243;  home,  tenderness  and  refinement 
of,  145;  home  life,  190,  198;  household 


equipment,  203;  humor,  209;  idea  of 
rational  enjoyment  was  sermon,  154; 
imagination  awakened  in  struggle  for 
freedom,  144;  incident  of  "Betty, 
daughter  of  an  eloquent  preacher," 
164;  inconsistencies  of,  177;  industry 
and  determination  to  succeed,  205;  in 
essence  a  Democrat,  192 ;  in  fiction  and 
in  fact,  184;  in  tradition,  hard  faced, 
atrabilious,  209;  inventory  of  "  appar- 
rell  "  for  100  men,  197;  key  to,  in  Bible 
as  constitution,  364;  left  England  to 
reform  Church,  141 ;  less  logical  than 
admirers  have  assumed,  170;  letters  of 
John  Winthrop,  189;  lip  service  and 
divine  right  of  kings  resented,  143; 
living  protest  before  he  left  England, 
136;  love  of  color,  198;  made  by  reli 
gious  persecution,  246;  majestic  figure 
of,  99;  majority  in  Parliament,  138; 
men  of  gentle  blood  among,  244;  men 
of  learning,  188 ;  men  of  rank  enlisted 
in  cause  of,  186;  migration  of  a  people, 
114;  migration  of  first  importance  in 
American  civilization,  91;  mind,  saw 
no  conflict  between  human  and  divine 
law,  365;  ministers,  361;  misinterpre 
tation  of,  211 ;  morbid  self-reproach  of 
one  youth,  164;  movement  represented 
in  Germany  by  Mennonites  and  Tun- 
kers,  403;  myth  of  "Blue  Laws,"  185; 
name  given  to  forces  long  existing, 
399 ;  narrow  in  faith,  158 ;  no  atavism 
in  talent  of,  82 ;  number  of  persecutions 
for  witchcraft,  180 ;  obstinacy  matched 
by  stubbornness  of  dissenter,  369 ;  op 
pression,  dawning  suspicion  of,  362; 
originator  of  "  campaign  of  educa 
tion,"  167;  originator  of  popular  edu 
cation,  170;  participant  in  all  suc 
cessful  settlement,  406;  persecution, 
expression  of  the  morals  of  his  time, 
173;  persecution  of  Quakers,  172;  per 
secution  of  witches  justified  by  Bible, 
179;  physical  selection  forced  charac 
ter  into  a  narrow  mold,  82;  played  part 
of  Norman  in  England,  101;  popular 
education,  168 ;  product  of  intolerance 
and  fanaticism,  of  his  time,  139;  pro 
genitors  of  enlightened  Protestantism, 
171;  propaganda  of  education  aimed 


440 


INDEX 


at  despotism,  170;  purpose  of  coming 
to  America,  116;  rank  and  file  men  of 
standing,  115;  rebel,  of  profound  reli 
gious  conviction,  before  reaching 
America,  135;  recognition  of  rest  for 
human  machinery,  160;  relation  to 
Church  of  England,  114;  relentless  war 
code  of,  182 ;  religion  a  part  of  every 
day  life,  145;  religion  of,  made  him 
builder  of  new  state,  365;  resentful  of 
terms  Brownist  and  schismatic,  142; 
representative  of  spirit  of  his  age,  171 ; 
Sabbath,  a  religious  bogey  for  genera 
tions,  154 ;  sad-color,  190,  195 ;  school  of 
intellectual  training  was  discussion  of 
Biblical  constitution  and  polemical 
warfare,  170;  sermons,  163;  sombre- 
colored  garments  of,  190;  sought  a 
renovated  England  with  Bible  as  con 
stitution,  110;  spirit  of,  77;  spirit  of  re 
sistance  dominant  in,  109;  starch  and 
uniform,  355;  "  Puritan  Sunday  "  dis 
tinguished  from  "  Continental  Sun 
day,"  156;  Sunday  of  economic,  po 
litical  and  religious  importance,  160; 
gloom  of,  152;  not  indigenous  to  Mass 
achusetts,  152;  religious  feature  of, 
obvious  and  over-emphasized;  politi 
cal  and  economic  effects  of  subtler  de 
velopment,  162;  superstitious  in  keep 
ing  with  times,  360;  supervised  from 
England,  193;  suppression  of  immoral 
ity,  206;  supreme  regard  for  facts,  165; 
"take their  pleasures  sadly,"  156;  the 
ocracy,  bigotry,  superstition,  and 
cruelty  of ,  171;  theological  controver 
sies,  triviality  of,  362;  theological 
questions  among,  171;  Thursday  lec 
ture  brought  from  England,  156;  tor 
tured  by  sermons,  163;  treatment  of 
witches  and  witchcraft,  178;  typical, 
of  imagination,  191 ;  utilitarian  motive 
in  dress  of,  197;  voiced  rights  of  the 
people,  161;  was  not  an  unkempt  im 
migrant,  112;  wolf  baiting  as  sport, 
206;  women,  colors  and  variety  in 
dress  of,  194,  196,  199;  French  styles 
among,  199;  youth  had  the  modern 
small  boy's  disregard  for  elderly  pe 
destrians,  165. 


Puritan  and  Cavalier,  liberty  common 
cause  of,  246. 

Puritan  and  Pilgrim,  colonies  con 
trasted,  102 ;  confusion  of,  112 ;  differed 
as  "  Hebrew  prophet  from  St.  John," 
100;  difference  in  character  seen  in 
treatment  of  Quakers,  witchcraft, 
heretics,  141;  divergence  govern 
mental  as  well  as  temperamental,  100, 
147;  hardy  pioneers,  112;  neither  enter 
tained  hatred  of  color,  112;  neither 
superior  to  teachings  of  his  time,  141 ; 
theocratic  state,  purpose  of  Puritan; 
Pilgrim  made  no  adaptation  of  the 
Bible  to  practical  government,  148. 

Puritan  colonists,  religion  among,  gave 
birth  to  American  democracy,  116. 

Puritanism,  social  movement,  213;  blind 
obedience  to  creed  above  morality  of 
intellect,  401 ;  characteristics  embraced 
under  term,  399;  conception  of  social 
equality  and  logical  path  to  demo 
cracy,  130;  dogmas  and  sacraments  of, 
401;  elegance  and  luxury  represented 
by,  in  England,  188 ;  embodied  spirit  of 
protest  against  existing  order,  111; 
first  solution  of  labor  problems,  155; 
in  essence  slavery,  400;  influence  of  the 
Bible  on,  122;  in  Virginia,  251;  leads 
to  Democracy,  130;  political-social 
movement,  155;  polity  as  well  as  a  re 
ligion,  and  supplied  a  new  trinity,  143; 
reaction  against,  in  England,  210;  re 
bound  from,  in  America,  210 ;  recruited 
from  all  ranks,  111;  struck  blow  at 
ignorance,  167. 

Puritanism  and  Quakerism,  398. 

Quakerism,  flexibility  to  changing  social 
forces,  401 ;  spiritual  and  intellectual 
revolt,  398. 

Quakers,  influence  on  political  and  social 
life  of  Pennsylvania,  379;  lashed  by 
Pilgrims  and  Puritans,  141 ;  Penn  con 
verted  to  faith  of,  397 ;  persecution  of, 
by  Puritans,  172,  173,  175,  176,  177,  178, 
281 ;  simplicity  of,  401 ;  treatment  of,  in 
New  Amsterdam,  389. 

Quakers  in  Pennsylvania  and  Puritans 
in  Massachusetts,  zealous  for  right  as 
they  saw  it,  400. 


INDEX 


441 


Quarrels  with  governors,  320;  with 
mother  country,  lesson  of,  320. 

Rabble,  attracted  to  every  great  social 
movement,  376. 

Race,  American,  developed  through 
frontier  life,  308;  agencies  of  change 
in,  often  unperceived,  127;  a  new,  in 
America,  185;  a  strong  people  never 
self -contented,  2G8;  causes  that  pro 
duce  changes  often  obscure,  136;  de 
velopment  traced  to  wars,  43;  effect 
of  temperature  on,  54;  inexorable 
mastery  of  rudimentary,  in  conflict 
with  highly  developed,  353;  religion 
as  a  determining  factor  in,  116 ;  result 
of  accumulative  influences,  135. 

Race  development,  American,  influence 
of  nature  on,  64;  effect  of  climatic 
conditions  and  physical  environment 
on,  233;  study  of  geographical  condi 
tions,  66 ;  traced  to  the  effects  of  war, 
43. 

Races,  great,  are  mixed  races,  56;  sav 
age,  become  extinct  because  material 
all-sufficient,  109. 

Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  216,  306. 

Raleigh  and  Gilbert,  92. 

Rebellion,  in  early  history  of  colonies, 
267;  in  England  and  colonies,  simi 
larity  of,  383;  latent  spirit  of,  early 
manifest  in  colonies,  268. 

Recognition  of  rights  of  others  and 
bigotry  side  by  side  in  America,  349. 

Reform,  develops  beyond  original  con 
ception,  159. 

Reformation,  began  to  dissipate  super 
stition  of  belief  and  slavery,  372;  caste 
system  untouched  by,  130. 

Reformer,  grows  subjectively  on  his 
own  inspiration  and  from  reflection 
of  it  in  others,  159;  qualities  of,  159. 

Reformers,  petitions  to  Queen  Elizabeth, 
125 ;  Roger  Williams  and  Anne  Hutch- 
inson,  354-3G3. 

Religion,  comfortless  preaching  of,  372; 
difficult  to  estimate  its  influence  on 
nation  or  race,  1 16 ;  discordant  element 
of,  369;  formalistic,  most  impeditive  in 
civilized  progress,  370;  in  America, 
dread  of  having  new  country  battle 


field  of,  299;  in  America,  failure  of, 
when  injected  into  politics,  286;  in 
seventeenth  century,  inseparably  in 
terwoven  with  life,  98;  intolerance  of, 
in  colonial  period,  283;  of  Dutch  colo 
nies,  no  liberality  in,  388;  Puritan's 
had  to  do  with  the  individual  soul, 
123;  state  control  attacked,  356;  tor 
ture  f or^the  glory  of,  175. 

Religion  and  customs,  early,  of  New 
England,  unaltered  by  alien  immigra 
tion,  402. 

Religio-social  movements,  non-conf orin- 
ism  greatest  of,  398. 

Religious  binotry  of  the  Puritan,  140; 
disputes  weakened  as  progress  pushes 
aside  theological  element  of  society, 
370;  freedom  drew  Germany's  non 
conformists  to  Pennsylvania,  403; 
freedom  in  seventeenth  century  un 
known,  278;  intolerance  harsher  than 
political,  269 ;  speculation,  295. 

Religious  sink  of  New  England,  366. 

Republic,  germ  of,  396;  in  England 
under  Cromwell,  384. 

Republic  of  Connecticut,  343. 

Republican  form  of  government,  Eng 
lishmen's  inclination  and  training  for, 
384. 

Restoration,  the,  England  hopes  for 
Virginia's  support,  271;  in  Virginia 
political  revolution,  261. 

Revenue,  squeezing  out  of,  duty  of 
Dutch  governors,  387. 

Revolution,  American,  accumulative 
preparation  for,  in  colonies,  319;  at 
time  of,  colonies  had  given  birth  to 
men  of  widest  attainments,  336;  folly 
of  rulers  and  quarrels  prepared  way 
for,  304. 

Rhetoric,  last  straw  in  balance  of  Ameri 
can  rebellion,  384. 

Rhode  Island,  asylum  for  dissenters, 
outcome  of  theocracy's  downfall,  369; 
beginning  of  escape  from  creed,  369; 
deprived  Catholics  of  franchise,  283; 
forerunner  of  American  liberality, 
374;  no  contribution  to-  constitutional 
government,  376;  pit  of  abomination 
to  other  New  England  colonies,  366; 
political  organization  founded  on  re- 


442 


INDEX 


ligious  liberty,  374  ;  refuge  from  Mass 
achusetts'  precise  formalism,  373; 
religious  freedom  of,  defended  by 
Roger  Williams,  373;  Roger  Williams, 
lawgiver  of,  354;  settlers  of,  refugees 
from  tyranny  of  Massachusetts,  373. 

Ribaut,  Jean,  307. 

Rice,  introduced  into  South  Carolina  by 
accident,  322. 

Rice  planters  (South  Carolina),  prefer 
ence  for  city  life,  324. 

Ridiculous,  the,  74. 

Rolfe,  John,  227;  marriage  to  Pocahon- 
tas,  228. 

Romance,  Puritan,  description  of  a  lov 
er's  lane  in  new  country,  166. 

Romanism,  120. 

Sabbath,  Puritan,  enjoyment  of,  162; 
religious  observance  brought  from 
England,  152. 

St.  Bartholomew's  Day,  massacre  of,  120. 

St.  Mary's,  provincial  capital  of  Balti 
more's  colony,  300. 

Salem  disfranchised  for  complicity  in 
Williams's  sedition,  3C4;  witches,  178. 

Savannah,  beginning  under  Oglethorpe, 
331. 

Scharf  on  early  Maryland  colonists,  291. 

Schiller,  392. 

Scotch,  colony  at  Port  Royal,  317;  High 
landers,  in  America,  332;  immigration, 
impress  on  American  character,  311. 

Scotch-Irish,  402. 

Secession  from  Union  led  by  South  Caro 
lina,  319. 

Sectional  diversity  of  character  in  Amer 
ica,  233. 

Sectionalism,  East  and  West  contrasted, 
68. 

Self-government,  339. 

Self-reliance,  264. 

Settlers,  European,  changed  appearance 
of,  49. 

Seymour,  Sir  Edward,  in  curt  retort 
voiced  epitome  of  England's  colonial 
greed,  265. 

Sewell's  Diary,  165. 

Ship  of  State,  illustration  used  by  Roger 
Williams,  373. 

Simple  Cobbler  of  Aggawam,  the,  198. 


Size,  effect  of,  on  ideas,  66 ;  temperament 
modified  by,  67. 

Slave  insurrection  in  South  Carolina 
(1740),  324;  labor  and  importation  of 
rum  prohibited  by  Georgia  charter, 
331. 

Slavery,  curse  of  all  the  Southern  colo 
nies,  335;  degraded  free  labor,  336; 
destroyed  because  an  economic  fal 
lacy,  256;  destructive  morally  and 
economically,  255;  distinction  in  social 
conditions  emphasized  by,  255;  eco 
nomic  untruth  of,  256  ;  in  Georgia,  pro 
hibited  for  economic  and  military  rea 
sons,  334;  in  Maryland,  289;  in  New 
York,  house  servants,  391 ;  in  Virginia 
and  Maryland  softened  by  contact  with 
civilization,  323;  more  baneful  influ 
ence  in  South  Carolina  than  in  any 
other  colony,  317;  taint  of  color  hope 
less,  256;  tobacco  gave  economic  rea 
son  for,  in  Virginia,  238;  variation  of 
house  slaves  and  field  slaves,  50;  with 
held  education  in  Virginia,  252. 

Smith,  Goldwin,  381. 

Smith,  John,  on  Virginian  emigrants, 
223. 

Smuggling  strains  relations  between 
English  and  Spanish  colonies,  332. 

Social  level  stands  at  level  of  intelligence 
of  common  people,  167. 

Social  revolutions,  basis  of,  375;  three 
stages  of,  376. 

Social  system,  78. 

Society,  American,  cataclysmic  forma 
tion  of,  25;  European,  slow  advance 
ment  of,  25;  former  stages  of,  24; 
modern,  has  dissociated  teachings  of 
Bible  from  temporal  rule,  169;  modi 
fied  by  non-conformism,  399;  repro 
duction  of  itself,  24 ;  stages  of  growth 
in,  31. 

Soil,  fertile,  influence  on  character,  59 ; 
in  New  England  and  Virginia,  235. 

South,  the,  awakening  of  manufactur 
ing  and  spirit  of  competition,  55; 
effect  of  agriculture  on  character  and 
mode  of  life,  55;  differentiation  from 
North  and  English-speaking  world, 
378;  misinterpretation  of  settlers  of, 
218. 


INDEX 


443 


South  Carolina,  attempt  to  reproduce 
conditions  of  New  England  rather  than 
Virginia,  314;  dread  of  slave  uprising 
never  absent,  324;  enslaved  Indians, 
317 ;  first  permanent  settlement  in,  313 ; 
influenced  politically  and  materially 
by  rice  and  indigo,  321 ;  land  grants  to 
master  and  servant,  313;  method  of 
settlement  combined  Virginia  and 
Maryland,  325;  mixed  population,  314; 
no  manufactures  in,  325;  not  colony  of 
white  men  using  slaves,  but  of  slaves 
with  white  masters,  324. 

Sovereign,  English,  and  colonists,  po 
litical  ties  between,  381 ;  power  of,  in 
London  and  Jamestown,  382. 

Sovereignty  of  people,  control  of  purse, 
376. 

Spain  and  England,  relations  of,  332. 

Spaniards,  claim  to  Carolina  as  a  part  of 
Florida,  307 ;  hold  in  Northern  Europe 
broken  by  Dutch,  385. 

Spanish  Armada,  see  Armada,  Spanish. 

Spanish  courted  warfare  with  English 
colonists  in  South  Carolina,  317;  hold 
ings  in  America  menace  to  English 
colonies  in  South,  329;  testimony  on 
English  colonies,  92. 

Spectral  evidence,  181. 

Speculation,  audacity  of  American,  370. 

Spencer,  on  adjustment  of  internal  to 
external  relations,  49;  on  environment 
and  living  body,  47;  on  physical  condi 
tion  and  race  development,  48. 

Spirit  of  the  age,  historian's  interpreta 
tion  of,  383. 

Spiritual  development,  79. 

Spying,  method  of  guarding  dogmatism 
in  New  Haven,  345. 

Standish,  Miles,  88. 

Staples,  extensive  cultivation  of,  in 
fluences  character  of  people,  322. 

States,  comparative  size  in  East  and 
"West,  67;  materially  important  later, 
made  little  early  impression  on  nation, 
377;  Northern,  physical  alertness  of 
people  in,  54;  Southern,  effect  of  cli 
mate  on  vitality  in,  54. 

Stiles  on  bundling  in  New  England,  347. 

Stubbes,  Thilip,  Anatomic  of  Abuses, 
191. 


I  Suffrage,  religious    qualification   abol- 
[     ished  in  Massachusetts,  172;  varied  in 

colonies,  345. 

!  Summer,  warmer  than  in  Europe,  58. 
!  Sumptuary     laws      in     Massachusetts 
Colony,  193;  not  peculiar  to  America, 
200. 

Superstition  of  belief  attacked  by  refor 
mation,  372. 

Survival  of  fittest,  a  slow  process,  with 
out  catastrophic  climax,  257. 
Swedes,  in  America,  left   no  trace  of 
customs  or  language,  408. 

Tact,  English  deficient  in,  266. 

Taxation,  contest  over,  in  Maryland, 
298;  ever  recurring  dispute  between 
England  and  colonies,  318. 

Temperament,  62,  67,  78,  83,  409. 

Temperature,  composition  of  new  race 
affected  by,  55;  effect  of,  on  race 
characteristics,  54;  extremes  of,  neces 
sary  in  wheat  and  corn-belts,  59. 

Thanksgiving,  202,  208. 

Thayer,  Mrs.,  epitaph  to,  81. 

Theocracy,  crumbling,  foreshadowed  re 
ligious  and  mental  liberality,  370;  in 
Massachusetts  demanded  banishment 
of  revolters,  349;  means  of  overcoming 
resistance  to  authority  of,  339 ;  opposi 
tion  to,  356;  rigid  adherence  to,  by 
Puritan  founders  of  Massachusetts  in 
vited  resistance  and  led  to  new  colo 
nies,  337. 

Theocratic  rule  of  Massachusetts  sur 
vived  by  liberality  of  Rhode  Island, 
376;  state  foredoomed  as  education 
spread,  168. 

Theological  controversies,  fallibility  of, 
362;  discussion  crowded  out  of  Vir 
ginia  by  interest  in  fox  chase,  272; 
heresies  replaced  by  literary  heresies, 
371;  tyranny,  revolt  against,  created 
type  of  Samuel  Gorton  mold,  368. 

Threeneedles,  Sarah,  165. 

Thrift,  New  England,  origin  in  Puritan 
character,  399. 

Thursday  lecture,  157. 

"  Times,  the  good  old,"  social  divisions 
in,  200;  simple  amusements  of,  205. 

Tobacco,  aristocracy  of,  distinct  phase 


444 


INDEX 


of  social  development  of  world,  254; 
continued  invasion  of  forest  land,  236 ; 
cultivation  of,  created  demand  for 
England's  surplus  labor,  231 ;  cultiva 
tion  of,  differentiates  Massachusetts 
and  Virginia,  247;  cultivation  of, 
required  large  territory,  236;  event 
ually  became  agricultural  Minataur, 
258;  golden  age  of,  291;  greatest  lux 
ury  becomes  one  of  world's  necessi 
ties,  226;  in  Virginia,  rice  in  South 
Carolina,  illustrative  of  effect  of  cul 
tivation  of  staple  on  character  of  peo 
ple,  322 ;  its  effect  on  the  character  of 
a  people,  290;  measure  of  value  in 
Maryland,  290;  social  and  political 
revolution  through,  226. 

Tolerance  of  opinion  in  the  seventeenth 
century,  268. 

Toleration,  with  Baltimore,  expediency ; 
with  Penn,  moral  conviction,  400. 

Toleration  Act,  first  in  America,  281. 

Tory  element  in  Pennsylvania  conquered 
by  German  colonists,  405. 

Town  Meeting,  a  New  England  institu 
tion,  250. 

Tracts  of  Puritans,  heavy,  rambling, 
discursive,  151. 

Tradition,  hampering  element  in  pro 
gress  of  a  people,  370. 

Treaty  of  Utrecht,  effect  on  slave  trade, 
240. 

Two  fruitful  sisters,  quarrels  of,  293. 

Type,  new,  molding  of,  20. 

Types,  American,  45;  variation  of,  but 
not  a  departure  from,  in  the  United 
States,  57. 

Tyranny,  not  form  of  rule,  caused  defi 
ance  of  colonies,  383;  of  Massachusetts 
drove  colonists  to  Rhode  Island,  373; 
theocratic,  bred  its  discontent,  338. 

Tyrants,  ultimate  benefactors  of  man 
kind,  104. 

Ultramontanism,  unknown  in  Maryland 

Colony,  285. 

Union,  political,  beginning  of,  210. 
Union,  the,  supported  by  Germans  in 

America,  405. 
United    Provinces,    little    thought    of 

founding  a  Republic,  393. 


United  States  (see  also  America,  Ameri 
can,  American  People,  Character, 
Race,  Temperament,  etc.),  climate  in, 
68 ;  colonized  by  men  in  faith  and  pur 
pose  as  varied  as  their  climes,  275; 
church  and  temporal  power,  285 ;  effect 
of  climatic  extremes  on  inhabitants, 
57 ;  history  of,  new  path  in  social  pro 
gress,  84;  mental  depression  of  winter 
in,  59;  record  of  physical  achievement, 
64 ;  result  of  intersectional  marriages 
in,  57;  slavery  in,  an  economic  fallacy, 
256;  spirit  of  enterprise  in,  58;  study  of 
a  people  always  in  flux,  315 ;  unit  in 
territorial  communication  as  well  as 
politically,  316;  variation  in  soil,  58; 
variation  of  temperature  in,  54. 

United  States,  Constitution  of,  150;  con 
scientious  endeavor  to  get  greatest 
good  from  it  as  code  of  morals  and 
liberty,  149 ;  perennial  argument  over, 
not  the  luxury  of  idle  minds,  149. 

Utopian  experiment  in  Georgia,  326, 331. 

Velasco,  de,  Don  Alonzo,  voices  Spanish 
view  of  Virginia  colonists,  92. 

Veto  power  retained  by  governor  in 
Maryland,  298. 

Vigor,  54,  82,  361. 

Virginia,  absence  of  town  life  in,  253; 
"  a  fat  riche  soile,"  235;  analogy  with 
Rome  under  patrician's  domination, 
255;  aristocratic  descent  a  myth,  217; 
as  acid  to  alkali  of  New  England,  258 ; 
Assembly  refuses  to  recognize  author 
ity  of  Commonwealth,  263;  attempts 
to  paint  founders  exclusively  of  crimi 
nal  class,  225;  broader  minded  than 
Puritan,  216  ;  Cavalier  emigration, 
132 ;  Cavalier,  strength  of,  241 ;  ceased 
to  be  place  of  exile,  273 ;  character  of, 
laid  in  system  of  slavery  and  tobacco, 
215;  character  of  settlers,  223;  class 
distinctions,  237,  242;  consciousness 
of  strength  causes  resentment  of  Eng 
land's  attitude,  265;  contentment 
transformed  adventurers  into  incip 
ient  patriots,  273;  contrast  of  aristo 
crats  and  mental  giants  with  "  mean 
whites,"  242;  control  of  taxation,  293; 
criminals  and  paupers,  218;  criminals 


INDEX 


445 


banished  to,  224;  denied  foothold  to 
Lord  Baltimore  because  of  religion, 
276 ;  dependent  upon  slave  labor,  258 ; 
developed  by  isolation,  250 ;  expedients 
to  create  towns,  254;  exploited  for 
English  profit,  219;  fallacy  of  commu 
nism,  228 ;  golden  era  of,  258 ;  governing 
classes  highly  educated,  253;  growth 
of  black  population,  239;  "  incurable 
virus  of  liberty,"  162;  indentured  ser 
vants,  224,  324;  influence  of  tobacco 
on  economic  system,  236;  introduction 
of  tobacco  of  momentous  importance, 
227;  kidnapping  of  blacks  a  respect 
able  business,  240;  land  of  rivers,  227; 
limited  slavery  of  white  men  in,  225; 
manufacturing,  254 ;  modern  lawless 
ness  result  of  early  social  system, 
243;  more  tolerant  community  than 
Massachusetts,  269 ;  mother  of  a  race  of 
great  men,  258 ;  no  sense  of  community 
interests,  250;  not  a  sea-faring  people, 
254;  not  merchants,  254;  oligarchy  as 
well  as  aristocracy,  247;  patriotism, 
birth  of,  in,  273;  persecution  of  Puri 
tans,  252;  persecution  of  Quakers,  251, 
281;  picture  of  plantation  life,  259; 
political  offenders  transported  to, 
224;  pride  in  class  system,  255 ;  pros 
perity  developed  life  of  ease  and 
pleasure,  272;  Puritan  element  in,  233; 
recognition  of  right  of  taxation,  263; 
recruited  from  London  slums  and 
villages  of  England,  231 ;  redemption- 
ers,  238;  refuses  to  be  pawn  in  Eng 
lish  politics,  272;  refuses  to  support 
Restoration,  271;  schools,  252;  semi- 
feudal  system  of  land  tenure,  260; 
significance  of  first  assembly  of  Bur 
gesses,  239;  slaves,  323;  social  status 
of  settlers,  216;  sowed  slavery  and 
reaped  freedom,  239 ;  spirit  of  adven 
turer,  gambler,  speculator,  among 
settlers,  217;  survival  of  intellectual 
race  marred  by  slow  extermination  of 
inferior  class,  257;  system  of  master 
and  servant  fostered  in,  236,  255,260; 
taxation  and  royal  governors,  263; 
tobacco  as  currency,  229,  254;  tobacco 
as  inducement  for  improved  character 
of  settlers,  229;  tobacco  aristocracy, 


254;  tobacco  became  life  of  colony, 
232;  unmenacedby  Indian  massacre  as 
community  bond,  237,  239;  wealth 
reared  on  a  luxury,  258. 

Virginia  and  Maryland,  "  Two  Fruitful 
Sisters,"  and  their  quarrels,  293. 

Virginia  and  Massachusetts,  content 
ment  in  one,  turmoil,  spiritual  and 
material,  in  the  other,  272;  persecu 
tions  and  changes  in  England  less 
keenly  felt  in  Virginia,  270 ;  theological 
bigotry  in,  258. 

Virginians,  fondness  for  outdoor  sports 
and  daring  and  intellectual  alertness, 
391;  political  genius  of,  redeemed 
economic  unsoundness  of  institu 
tions,  391;  speculative  in  commerce 
and  political  philosophy,  392. 

Virginians  and  Puritans,  motives  con 
trasted,  217. 

Virtues,  handed  clown,  22. 

Wallace  quoted,  59. 

"War  of  Jenkins'  Ear,  events  of,  333. 

Warfare,  border,  training  for  American 
soldiers,  44. 

Wars,  American,  53;  American  psycho 
logy  influenced  by,  44. 

Washington  and  Cromwell,  analogy  of 
leadership,  383. 

Wesley,  John,  belief  in  witchcraft,  180. 

West,  condition  in  winter,  59;  gold 
discoveries  in,  impetus  to  satisfy 
American  craving  for  the  unexplored, 
315. 

Western  mining  camp,  etiquette  of, 
366. 

Westerner,  the,  67;  unconscious  in 
fluence  of  environment  on,  234. 

West  India  Company,  commercial  policy 
of,  385. 

White  labor  in  New  York  Colony,  391. 

Wife  and  child,  status  of,  with  Puritans. 
154. 

Wilderness  and  Indian,  barriers  to 
American  colonization,  350. 

Wilderness  preferred  by  liberal  Puritans 
to  theocratic  rule,  337. 

William  and  Mary,  accession  of,  gave 
Maryland  Protestants  opportunity  to 
assert  rights,  300. 


446 


INDEX 


William,  the  Testy,  caprices  of,  387. 

Williams,  Roger,  appointed  to  church  in 
Salem,  364;  arrives  in  Massachusetts, 
354;  banished  as  iconoclast,  357;  cham 
pions  rights  of  aborigines,  356,  358; 
character  and  liberality  of,  373;  dis 
tinguishes  between  liberty  and  licen 
tiousness,  373;  establishes  settlement 
at  Providence,  358 ;  gospel  of,  survives 
theocracy  of  Massachusetts  and  aris 
tocratic  institutions  of  Virginia,  376; 
letter  defining  liberty  of  conscience, 
373;  picture  of  commonwealth,  373; 
splendid  sanity  of ,  371,  375;  teachings 


of,  light  on  weakness  of  theocracy, 

370. 

Wilmington,  Swedish  settlement  at,  407. 
Winter,  54,  58. 
Winthrop,  John,  114,  189,  193,  195,  198, 

200. 

Wit,  74. 

Witchcraft,  178,  179,  180,  182,  361. 
Women,  insanity  from  isolation,  60. 
Writers,  European,  on  America,  27. 

"  Yankee,"  European  generality  for 
Americans,  342;  resented  by  Massa 
chusetts  men,  343;  wit,  209. 


CAMBRIDGE  .  MASSACHUSETTS 
U    .    S    .    A 


14  DAY  USE 

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